By Anna Phillips | February 21, 2020 at 9:52 PM EST – Updated February 21 at 9:52 PM
Graham had just begun a shift as a corrections officer in the dormitory of the Columbus Correctional Institution when an inmate approached him at his desk with focused eyes.
“When he got to the desk he flipped his hand, I saw the shank — homemade weapon — and as he threw the blow, I blocked it, but he still caught my mouth and nose,” Graham said. “We tussled back and forth for about 5 minutes until I could get him far enough away from me to get my pepper spray out and spray him and activate the prison alarm system.”
Graham pinned Keenan Jones to the ground and held him until help arrived.
“A split second is all I had to keep from getting my throat cut,” he said.
Graham was taken to the hospital with cuts across his face, head, chest and back.
He’s since been diagnosed with anxiety and PTSD.
“I have nightmares sleeping and I take medications for all of it to this day, but it’s been a hard battle,” he said. “You know, I’ve got a few physical [injuries] out of it but for the most part its mental.”
Graham served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 9 years before beginning a career in the sheet metal industry and eventually becoming a corrections officer.
“I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff,” he said. “I’ve seen people stabbed, I’ve seen people shot. I’ve seen a lot of things but I guess, none of it was actually meant for me so it didn’t bother me like this did. This was an attack on me, personally, sought out.”
He’d been on the job for 12 years and two months when he was attacked. Afterward, he struggled to leave his home for a year.
“It’s hard to function and a lot of people don’t understand it, you know, but once you’ve been done that way. It’s hard,” he said.
The District Attorney’s Office says that attack was likely gang-related.
In a statement, lawyers called it a “cold, callous and unprovoked” attack.
Graham was in the court room Monday to hear the plea, and says he is satisfied with the work of the District Attorney but finds no closure for himself in the sentence.
He’s focused only on his own recovery, wearing a beard to hide the scars along his jaw.
“Some people say well, just get over it. You can’t. You just don’t get over it,” he said. I mean, everybody’s different, I understand that. Everybody is triggered by different things…but this incident has really got me mentally.”
He hopes other corrections officers will hear his story.
“I loved the job, I enjoyed it, you know, I done it to the best of my ability,” he said. “All correction officers out there, be aware. You never know where they’ll come from or where you’ll be at. I never I’d been attacked sitting at a desk.”
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