Who Is David Johnson? Ohio Prison Inmate Strangled In Transport Van

The Ohio prisons agency has launched an investigation after a prison inmate was fatally strangled early February while riding in a transport van with other prisoners and guards inside, officials said.

David Johnson, 61, was in a van leaving the city of Columbus and heading back to the Ross County Correctional Institution in Chillicothe 50 miles away when incident happened Feb. 1.

Johnson’s body was discovered shortly after the van arrived. The killing was estimated to have taken place between 2:45 p.m. and 2:55 p.m., authorities said.

“When the bus arrived back in Ross County there was a dead inmate,” Ross County Prosecutor Matthew Schmidt said.

Prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said Tuesday that a prison review team is looking both at the slaying and the agency’s inmate transportation policies, according to Fox News.

Schmidt said guards on the vans apparently cannot see the prisoners once they’re loaded into the van. He also mentioned that inmates were positioned in different sections of the van and secured with handcuffs and a chain around their stomach. However, they were still able to move from seat to seat within those sections.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the slaying occurred since the inmates were handcuffed. However, authorities suspected 29-year-old inmate named Casey Pigge could be the culprit. Last month, Pigge pleaded guilty in Warren County Common Pleas Court to murdering his cellmate with a cement block from the wall of their cell in the segregation unit at Lebanon Correctional Institution.

“The fact that he was left alone with access to other inmates is beyond me. I’m completely amazed this was allowed to happen,” Schmidt said.

Pigge was serving 41 years to life sentence for the 2009 murder of girlfriend’s mother and setting her on fire.

Johnson had been taken to Columbus for medical treatment. Prison records showed he was serving an eight-year sentence for sexual battery out of Franklin County.

No charges had been filed in regards to last week’s incident, but the coroner’s office said it was investigating the death as a homicide.