BY John Lauinger
A major security breakdown on Rikers Island left a shackled inmate unsupervised - a virtual sitting duck for another prisoner who savagely slashed him, sources told the Daily News.
One correction officer was suspended without pay for a month and a captain was also suspended, city officials said. Several other correction officers are under investigation for the procedural screwups that contributed to the gang-related attack.
"It felt like it was a setup," said Raquieth Johnson, 23, who recalled choking on his own blood after the April 14 attack. "It felt like a hit."
Despite a sharp decline in jail violence - there were just 34 stabbings and slashings last year compared with 1,005 in 1995 - officials say gangs are still a problem.
In an exclusive jailhouse interview last week, Johnson still bore evidence of the attack on his head and face - stab wounds sutured in a way that resembles the laces on a football. A deep slice opened a blood vessel in one of his temples. One side of his face was torn open from his ear to his mouth. It took more than 150 stitches to close the wounds.
Johnson said he was restrained with leg irons, a waist chain and handcuffs locked into the waist chain. His hands were also fitted with security mittens as he was being escorted from his one-hour recreation period on the yard back to his cell.
Sources said jail regulations require inmates like Johnson, who has a record of violence behind bars, to be escorted by a captain. The suspended captain, Lenox Hackett, was eating breakfast in the yard and dispatched a correction officer instead.
Johnson said a single officer accompanied him and two other inmates through two gates to their tier. Michaun Jacques, the suspended correction officer, was posted on that tier.
A team of correction officers and a captain are supposed to escort each of the high-risk inmates to their cells and remove their restraints.
"None of that happened," a corrections source said.
Instead, the officer who escorted the three inmates from the yard took one of the prisoners to another part of the tier, allowing Johnson and the other man to shuffle toward their cells unsupervised.
In a flash, inmate Michael Molinero, 23, who was awaiting trial for murder, rushed Johnson from behind and sliced his face with the makeshift blade, sources said.
Molinero had asked to be let out of his cell to shave just minutes before the attack, the sources said.
The timing of the request left him roaming free when Johnson arrived on the cell block. Johnson, who is awaiting trial in a 2008 murder in Queens, told The News he did not see his attacker. He would not finger Molinero.
Johnson, who sources say is a member of the Bloods street gang, said he asked Jacques for help, but she ran past him. He said he laid up against a locked tier gate, fearing his attacker would finish him off.
The Department of Correction is probing the troubling series of screwups that allowed the attacker to run loose with a handmade blade in a maximum-security cell block, jail sources said.
Johnson's father, Robert, said his family plans to sue the city. The elder Johnson said he got a phone call from his son after the attack."Dad, they tried to kill me," the younger Johnson told his dad. "They had me in chains. I walked by, the guard turned her back and this guy almost killed me."
Investigators presented evidence to the Bronx district attorney's Office Friday. No one has been charged.
The probe will lack a key piece of evidence. A source said inmates tampered with at least one security camera on the tier so there's no recording of the attack.
Jail officials said Raquieth Johnson and Molinero are violent Bloods - and the attack shows that gangs still create tremendous security problems in the city's jails. About 2,700 inmates - or roughly 20% of the total population of about 13,000 - are affiliated with one of the 60 gangs and subgroups represented in the system, officials said.
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