While GDC portrayed the incident as an isolated incident and never explained how an inmate working in the kitchen could have obtained a loaded handgun, a former GDC employee told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about security loopholes that could allow gun smuggling.
Speculation on Monday centered on possible ways guns could be smuggled into Georgia prisons, either through drones or back doors without metal detectors.
It's virtually impossible to bring in a weapon through the front entrance, where all visitors and employees must pass through a scanner that detects metal objects, but the back entrance is unguarded, former employees said.
Jose Morales, who served as warden at five different GDC facilities until his retirement in 2021, said he had never had a gun found or confiscated in his 22 years with GDC, but said he understands that if something coming in through the back door isn't properly vetted, it could end up in prison.
“The rear division is easily beaten,” he wrote in a text to the AJC.
Julia Roberts, a former corrections officer at Smith State Prison, also pointed to potential problems with the back gate: Trucks bringing food and other supplies come through the back gate, but Roberts said the pallets aren't thoroughly inspected, in large part because there aren't enough corrections officers available to inspect them.
“There may be something else in the container besides the rice and beans, but it's not opened,” she said.
Smith, like other state prisons, has been battling repeated drone smuggling attempts, a problem exacerbated by a severe shortage of correctional officers at GDC facilities.
In one such incident, which occurred in Smith last August, According to a GDC news release, Prison Superintendent Jacob Beasley was leaving the prison with officers from GDC's Office of Professional Standards when he spotted the drone flying and witnessed it crash onto the roof of a nearby home. Officers made four arrests during the incident and seized suspected contraband, including two loaded handguns, although it is unclear whether the firearms were intended to be brought into the prison.
Gov. Brian Kemp declined to comment on Sunday's deadly shooting, citing an ongoing investigation.
GDC did not respond to questions from the AJC Monday about security procedures for prison staff and inmates working in the kitchen, or whether there had been any prior concerns about guns at Smith State Correctional Facility.
But Roberts, who filed a whistleblower lawsuit against GDC, alleged in recent court filings that prison officials concealed credible information obtained in April 2022 that two handguns had been spotted in one of the prison's locked-down units.
According to the lawsuit, while working in the prison's mailroom, Roberts received a note from an inmate indicating the presence of a gun. She passed the information on to her superiors, including the assistant warden, the lawsuit states.
In notes Roberts provided to the AJC, she wrote that inmates specifically identified the cells where the guns were located and looked in one of them. The guns were never found, but Roberts claims the search only scratched the surface. She claims one of the cells was never searched, the jail was never placed on lockdown and no emergency response team was ever called.
Roberts said Monday that guns are an issue close to her heart.
“I couldn't believe that they had these memos about these two weapons and nothing was done, because we had heard from inmates quite frequently that there were guns in the prison,” she said, “and they did nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Grace's family declined to speak to the AJC. GDC said Sunday that Grace joined Smith State Correctional Facility in January on a job with Aramark. GDC did not respond to questions about whether Grace had worked at the facility before. Records from the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, which certifies corrections officers, show that someone with the same name had worked at two Georgia prisons.
According to the GDC, Hart is serving a 20-year sentence in Carroll County for intentional homicide and is up for release in June 2043. According to published reports, Hart was convicted of shooting and killing a Villa Rica man at a Memorial Day party in 2013.
Sunday's incident marks the second staff member killed at Smith Correctional Facility in less than a year. In October, corrections officer Robert Clark, 42, was attacked and killed by an inmate with a homemade weapon. The 42-year-old officer suffered multiple stab wounds, according to death certificate records.
Concerns about the safety of people working in Georgia's prisons had been raised even before Sunday's deadly incident. Executives at Wellpath, the prison system's health care provider, said in court documents that the widespread violence has meant they have struggled to recruit qualified staff to provide health care in Georgia prisons and has incurred additional costs in operating their health care programs.
Georgia prisons have recorded more murders in recent years than any other state prison in the South, the AJC reported. The majority of the victims have been stabbings. Death certificate records do not list any previous cases of Georgia inmates shooting and killing someone inside a state prison.
Hugh Hurwitz, a prison management consultant and former acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said shootings inside prisons are highly unusual and suggest serious security lapses that merit a thorough investigation.
“The gun was brought in, whether it was brought in by someone, thrown in, flown in or somehow, it could be a staff member or it could be a citizen that's still out there. We want to know who that was,” he said.
