Two guards who were delegated to monitor Jeffrey Epstein on the night of his alleged suicide were suspended. The warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center has also been reassigned to Washington D.C. by the Justice Department pending the investigation into his death, according to a story published by BBC.
The announcement, made on Tuesday, occurred as evidence that implicates Metropolitan Correctional Center’s negligence in Epstein’s death continues to stack up.
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Previously, Jeffrey Epstein had been on suicide at the correctional facility watch pending his upcoming trial involving charges of sexual abuse of underage girls. Officials for undisclosed reasons took him off suicide watch last month. However, guards were still required to do wellness checks every half hour.
Federal investigators discovered that wellness checks did not happen for several hours after guards found his body on Saturday morning, according to an anonymous source. Guards, who were on duty, allegedly fabricated the log entries to make it appear as if the wellness checks were done. A second source who was familiar with jail operations said Epstein’s body was found in his cell with a sheet around his neck.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered warden Lamine N’Diaye to be assigned to the Bureau of Prisons’ regional office while the investigation continued. He stated: “ Frankly, I’m angry at the MCC’s failure to adequately secure this prisoner. We will get to the bottom of what happened, and there will be accountability.”
A team of psychologists from the Bureau of Prisons, known as the suicide reconstruction team, went to MCC on Tuesday, according to a Justice Department official.
That team of psychologists will reconstruct the scene of Epstein’s suicide.
Eric Young, president of the union council that represents prison guards, suggested that reassignments are typically done while a probe happens to “protect the integrity of investigations until any formal action, if any, is warranted.”
Union leader and teacher at a federal prison in Florida, Jose Rojas, said N’Diaye should be suspended without pay instead of being allowed to work under reassignment. He stated it appears to him that the Bureau of Prisons is “protecting him and putting the blame on officers.”
“I put this on the warden,” he said. “If he would have had common sense and followed policy, we wouldn’t be here discussing this.”
