QUEBEC CITY — Two inmates are dead and six others were sent to hospital after a fight degenerated into a riot and fire Wednesday night at a Quebec City detention centre with a history of violence.
Three separate investigations have been launched to determine why a group of inmates started a rampage at 9:30 p.m.
They set fire to mattresses and bed sheets in the F wing of the jail in Orsainville, in the north end of the provincial capital.
Smoke filled the wing and prison officials say that eight inmates refused to leave their cells.
When officials reached them, they found the bodies of Eric Adamson Yaouvi, 20, and Denis Ampleman, 45.
“We don’t know what caused the altercation,” Johanne Beausoleil, a spokeswoman for the provincial corrections service, told reporters outside the jail on Thursday morning.
“The (provincial police) investigation and an administrative review will determine the motive.”
A coroner will also conduct a probe into the rampage.
Six inmates were sent to hospital, four of whom were to be returned to jail later on Thursday. Two other victims were kept in hospital after suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Damage to the jail was limited to the wing and no jail staff were injured, said Beausoleil.
The F wing of the jail houses inmates between 20 and 50 years of age who are being held in preventative detention for a variety of crimes. Some of the inmates will be transferred to jails in other cities, including Montreal, while the damage is cleaned up.
This is not the first time the Quebec City jail has been rocked by violence. Police were called to the facility in March and again in May after inmates set small fires.
In February 2008, about 70 inmates set fires inside their cells to protest a provincial ban on smoking indoors and outdoors at Quebec jails. The province later backed down and allowed all inmates to smoke outdoors.
