Warrant details efforts by South Florida prison guards to cover up deadly beating
An arrest warrant reveals state agents built their murder case against four South Florida prison officers accused of fatally beating an inmate on testimony from co-workers, at least one confession and video evidence showing the mortally injured man unable to walk on his own.
The officers repeatedly taunted the inmate, 60-year-old Ronald Gene Ingram, after he threw urine on one sergeant. The group kicked and stomped him out of view of video surveillance cameras. And after Ingram was put into a prison transport van, and found dead hours later, some of the officers leaned on others to keep quiet, the warrant said.
“They can’t see s--t, they don’t know s--t,” one officer, Christopher Rolon, 29, allegedly told another corrections officer, according to the warrant.
The warrant was unsealed Friday as a Miami-Dade judge ordered three of the officers be held in jail with no bond.
READ MORE: Officers charged with murder in beating death of inmate at troubled South Florida prison
Along with Rolon, Ronald Connor, 24, and Kirk Walton, 34, all made their first court appearances via closed-circuit TV from a Miami-Dade jail. The group is charged with second-degree murder, conspiracy, aggravated battery of an elderly adult and cruel treatment of a detainee. A fourth officer, Jeremy Godbolt, was arrested on Friday in Los Angeles and will be extradited to Miami to face the same charges.
None of the corrections officers who attended Friday morning’s Zoom hearing in masks and wearing protective vests, said much during a brief court appearance before Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Mindy Glazer.
Attorneys representing Walton and Rolon didn’t fight the charges. Connor, who said he was in the process of hiring a private attorney, was appointed a public defender. Glazer noted that the suspects would have to be separated and secured from the general jail population.
The first three officers were initially arrested on Thursday morning.
“These are serious charges and many times, what the state puts out there is not exactly what happened,” said Rolon’s defense attorney, Ed Martinez. “My client is innocent until proven guilty beyond and the exclusion of any reasonable doubt.”
State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Florida Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon and South Florida FDLE Special Agent in Charge Troy Walker detailed the arrests at a Friday press conference.
Dade Correctional, located in a rural zone about 40 miles south of downtown Miami, has been one of the state’s most problematic prisons. The Miami Herald detailed the facility’s “transitional care unit” that houses mentally ill inmates, where inmates have complained about officers refusing to give them food or putting laxative and urine in their meals. Ingram was housed there before his death.
According to the warrant, this is what happened:
It started early on Feb. 14, as officers were preparing to transport a group of inmates to facilities upstate. Ingram was seen on surveillance camera uninjured and walking fine.
Ingram, who was serving a life prison sentence for murder, threw what appeared to be urine at Godbolt, who ordered help to “extract” the man from his cell.
Godbolt slapped him “multiple times” and said “you should’ve never threw piss on me,” the sergeant later admitted to agents. Other officers joined in, even though Ingram “was handcuffed and not fighting back,” one witness said. Loud thumps and bangs were heard throughout the hallway, the warrant said.
As he crumpled to the ground, the officers continued to “kick and stomp” Ingram, before he was finally raised to his feet and walked down a hall, where three officers continued to “strike” and taunt him. “This yo breakfast,” Rolon allegedly told Ingram.
As the prisoner escort arrived to the main control building, one witness noticed blood streaming from Ingram’s lip, and a bruised left eye. “Ingram appeared to have difficulty breathing, taking deep gasps,” the witness told agents.
Another witness noticed Ingram’s head “was slumped downward and he did not appear to be walking under his own power” as he was escorted to the van.
At the press conference, officials showed surveillance video depicting the handcuffed Ingram, being escorted out of his cell, walking with no problems. Later, after the alleged beating, the video shows two officers holding up the man, his feet dragging on the ground.
“Ingram was no longer able to walk on his own,” Fernandez Rundle said, adding inmates “should not be subject to forms of back-alley justice.”
Ingram was placed in a partitioned area of the van, away from other inmates. Ingram was discovered dead inside the transport van during a stop at the Florida Women’s Reception Center in Ocala.
An autopsy revealed Ingram died of blunt-force trauma. He suffered broken ribs and a punctured right lung that caused “extensive internal bleeding,” the Medical Examiner’s Office in Leesburg ruled; the death was classified as a homicide.
Multiple witnesses said the officers agreed to lie about what happened. Rolon allegedly told one officer “don’t worry about anything ... they have to prove everything first,” the warrant said.
Rolon, when interviewed by FDLE agents, “denied any use of force” against Ingram, the warrant said.
But other officers did speak to FDLE agents. And days after the death, Godbolt came forward to speak to FDLE agents. He admitted slapping Ingram, but tried to shift the blame to the others in the group, saying they were the ones who stomped Ingram “as he laid on the ground.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2022 at 11:51 AM.