Authorities in Fairfield County, Ohio have terminated three jail employees upon learning that they were staging wrestling fights with inmates.
Surveillance footage from the Fairfield County jail proved the involvement of Deputy Shawn Pettit, corrections officers Kyle Archibald and Landon Talbott in the matches that lasted 10 minutes at the jail’s confinement section.
“In 30 years I thought I’d seen just about everything,” Fairfield County Sheriff Alex Lape said. “I saw that video and I said you’ve got to be kidding.”
“I don’t know whether they [employees] took the bait of the challenge from the inmates. I don’t know. I couldn’t get really a direct answer on that.”
A fourth corrections officer, Kayla Doss was suspended without pay for 10 days for failing to report the incident.
Lape said that the inmates and employees shook hands and hugged after the fight. One of the three inmates described the matches as “purely consensual.”
“It’s pretty obvious you can see how that could have gone bad in 100 different ways,” Lape said, however. “It’s unacceptable behavior and it’s not going to be tolerated.”
