An indictment is being sought against a correctional officer at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail.
On December 28, the Commonwealth's Attorney in the City of Portsmouth said an indictment will be presented to an upcoming grand jury after it reviewed and investigated the incident.
13NewsNow spoke with inmate Skyler Peacock who said he was attacked by guard Dale Barnes in January 2018.
"He put me into a chokehold and he held on until I was out," said Peacock.
Peacock filed a misdemeanor assault charge against Barnes.
According to the criminal complaint, Peacock was going to get his medications and started to walk down the stairs when Barnes "got right in my way." According to the report, Peacock asked Barnes to move and then Barnes lunged at him, put him into a chokehold until he passed out.
Peacock said he woke up with a broken shoulder, and he has post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident.
"They're supposed to look out for us, and not do anything to harm us, and so forth and so on. But it's just messed me up in the head," said Peacock.
Superintendent David Hackworth said the jail launched an investigation and took appropriate action but would not go into detail. Barnes resigned a week after the incident.
Barnes' attorney Nick Renninger said Barnes never had issues in his 28 years experience as a guard and was a model employee.
"He acted based upon his training and his experience in dealing with a threat," said Renninger. "There were words exchanged and the inmate threatened to push him down the stairs so it's important to keep the context of a situation like this in mind."
The indictment comes after the Department of Justice completed an investigation into the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, and learned that the prisoner's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments were not protected.
In his first interview since the DOJ report, 13NewsNow asked Superintendent David Hackworth if he felt there were systematic issues within the jail.
"I think there's always that we're looking to improve and get better," said Hackworth. "I think that’s part of what we've been doing since I came over and I think it happened prior to that, is that we’re constantly looking at what are our policies, what are our procedures as well as what are our practices."
The investigation by the Justice Department started in December of 2016, and it concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that the jail failed to provide constitutionally adequate medical and mental health care to prisoners.
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