A man in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Complex was critically injured in an assault involving another man in his cell, Alaska State Troopers said.
Lawrence Fenumiai, 33, is facing first-degree assault charges in the incident that occurred early Wednesday morning.
Troopers said in an online report Thursday that they were notified of a “serious assault between two inmates” just before 6 a.m. The Alaska Bureau of Investigation responded and found the two men got into a physical fight and one suffered injuries they described as life-threatening, they said.
The injured man was transported to an Anchorage hospital and is in critical condition, troopers said. Fenumiai was treated by medical staff at the jail and remains in custody there.
The men shared a cell in a general housing unit at the jail, troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel said. The facility was in “nighttime operations, so the inmates were secured in the cell when the incident occurred,” he said in an email.
Both men, still in the pretrial phase of their cases, are unsentenced on felony and misdemeanor charges, he said.
Betsy Holley, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Corrections, said she couldn’t provide specific information about the incident due to the ongoing investigation.
Asked what protocols the department has in place to avoid violence between people in custody and held in the same cell, Holley said correctional officers “conduct regular checks on all inmates in our care.”
Fenumiai was initially jailed in May at Lemon Creek Correctional Center on charges stemming from an assault case, she said.