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Sergeant credits Kevlar gloves with saving fingers

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office

An inmate struggles with Orient Road Jail detention deputies.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 28, 2009

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Melissa Murrhee

Hillsborough County sheriff's Sgt. Selina O'Nan cringed when she watched a video of an altercation between a group of Orient Road Jail detention deputies and an unruly inmate.

The inmate struggled with guards as O'Nan opened a steel door. The inmate then kicked the door, slamming it shut on the sergeant's fingers, crushing two and fracturing a third.

Had O'Nan not been wearing a pair of Kevlar gloves - just approved last week - all three fingers would have been cut off, she said Monday.

The inmate, 23-year-old Melissa Faye Murrhee of Tampa, who had been brought in just before midnight Saturday on obstruction charges and numerous counts of probation violation, now faces additional charges of aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer. Bail has not been set.

She was in isolation under 24-hour guard at the Falkenburg Road Jail on Monday, jail officials said.

The Saturday night incident happened in the blink of an eye but was captured on two videos in the booking section of the jail.

"It was a typical Saturday night with law enforcement bringing them in by the truckloads," O'Nan said.

Deputies had gotten word of a combative inmate - Murrhee - coming in, and a team was assembled by O'Nan.

The inmate arrived and O'Nan talked to Murrhee. She seemed calm when she was taken out of the patrol car but became combative inside, O'Nan said.

In the booking section, Murrhee "decided that she no longer wanted to be there," O'Nan said. Two detention deputies were assigned to escort Murrhee to a holding cell where she could calm down before being booked, O'Nan said.

O'Nan unlocked the 170-pound door and began to open it when Murrhee kicked it shut.

"My hand got caught in that door," said the 130-pound O'Nan. "I heard it crunch."

The incident illustrates how quickly someone can get hurt, she said.

She has been injured before in her 16-year career as a detention deputy, but this may be the worst because she has lost the use of her left hand, at least for now.

Getting punched and having a black eye is one thing. Detention deputies with those kinds of injuries can still do their jobs, she said, but having a hand that is unusable will keep guards from active duty.

Inmate attacks on detention deputies happen all the time, she said.

"We have combative inmates on a nightly basis," she said. Over her career, she said, inmates have become more combative.

"There are way more violent inmates these days," said the married mother of two.

Jail officials had approved the use of the Kevlar gloves on Thursday, two days before the incident.

"The gloves saved my fingers from being severed," O'Nan said. For now, she needs immediate surgery to restore use of her fingers, she said. Even then, the prognosis is unknown.

She hopes to be back on the job after that.

"Hopefully," she said, "I'll be back in the game when I get that surgery done."

Sheriff's Col. Jim Previtera, who oversees jail operations, said such incidents can occur without warning. He said that the number of jail assaults on detention deputies has dropped this year because of a shift in personnel allowing more deputies in booking, where most of the scuffles occur.

The number of attacks on detention deputies has dropped from 76 in 2006 to 56 in 2008, he said. So far this year, there have been just 20 documented attacks on detention deputies.

The incident comes a month after a Polk County detention deputy died a week after being shoved against a wall by an inmate, authorities said.

On Aug. 30, Terrence Jerome Barnett, 28, became unruly and Polk sheriff's Sgt. Ronnie Brown was called into the cell, deputies said. The prisoner shoved the deputy against the wall, deputies said.

Brown underwent surgery at Winter Haven Hospital on Sept. 2 to fix a broken vertebrate he suffered in the incident. The sergeant, a nearly 20-year veteran of the Polk County Sheriff's Office, later died in his hospital bed on Sept. 8. Barnett now faces a first-degree murder charge in the incident.

On the night Brown died, Barnett was transferred to Hillsborough County lockup and was processed by O'Nan's team, she said.

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