By early Thursday morning, the state Department of Correction said two employees and 82 inmates remained inside the seized prison block, though it was unclear how many were hostages as opposed to hostage-takers.
Throughout the standoff, two of the prison employees — one of whom had non-life threatening injuries — and 46 inmates had been released in four groups by the hostage-takers, who said their rebellion was a direct response to President “Donald Trump.”
“Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now,” they said during the second of two manifesto-like phone calls to a local newspaper. “We know that the institution is going to change for the worse.”
The inmates demanded education “first and foremost,” a “rehabilitation program that works for everybody” and a comprehensive look at the prison’s budget and spending, according to audio of the calls posted online by the News Journal in Wilmington, Del., located about 40 miles north of Smyrna, where the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center has been since 1971.
