9 hospitalized after 200 prisoners rush corrections officers in riot at Southern California prison

BLYTHE, California — Eight corrections officers and an incarcerated man were injured in a riot involving about 200 inmates at the recreation yard of a Southern California prison, authorities said Thursday.

The violence broke out around 10 a.m. Wednesday when officers were escorting an inmate through the yard as part of a contraband investigation at Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The inmate headbutted a staff member and while he was being subdued, “approximately 200 captured people in the courtyard ran toward the officers and attacked them with fists and rocks,” the department said in a statement.

After firing a shotgun warning round, officers used “chemical agents and non-lethal impact rounds” to control the fight, the statement said.

Eight staff members and one inmate were treated at an outside hospital and later returned to the prison, officials said. The extent of their injuries was not available.

So far, thirty inmates have been identified as directly involved in the riot, and the investigation is ongoing.

Movement in yards and day rooms at all prisons statewide was restricted for 24 hours as officials conducted a routine threat assessment.

Ironwood, a minimum-to-medium security facility in the desert east of Los Angeles, opened in 1994 and houses about 2,500 male inmates.