Rikers Island Fire Forces Evacuations

A quick-spreading fire in a Rikers Island jail, George Motchan Detention Center, Sunday night destroyed 200 beds and forced the inmates to evacuate. Several of the dormitories were destroyed, according to NY Daily, and the prisoners are being held in other facilities on Rikers Island. A spokesperson for the correction department said it started in a heating unit, but the cause is still under investigation. Over a hundred firefighters battled the two-alarm fire, and the incident caused no injuries.

Bed-Stuy Bandmate Robber Speaks: It Was The Weed, Man

By Christopher Robbins
Last week we learned that despite the best of intentions, Bed-Stuy can be a scary place to settle down. Now, the man who police say jumped out of a second-story window after stealing musical equipment from a house of Brooklyn College bandmates explains what happened: it was the weed, man. From a Rikers Island jail cell, 23-year-old DuJuan Marshall tells the Times that he doesn't remember storming into the boys' apartment and pistol whipping them while his accomplices unloaded the stolen equipment, because an angel-dusted joint did him in. "I feel their pain," he says, echoing another famous truth-teller.
Marshall says that the day in question began with a benediction, at a church on nearby Quincy Street. "The pastor told me, 'You have a blessing coming your way.'" Doing what anyone would do following that holy edict, Marshall bought a bottle of sparkling wine. He then says that one of the boys who was robbed approached him to ask for cocaine or ecstasy, and he told him he couldn't get any. However, 18-year-old Ian Harris claims that Marshall in fact "mumbled something" about drugs, and he was "just, like, talking to himself."
Then, our protagonist "was smoking with people I shouldn't have been smoking with," and doesn't remember much afterwards. Marshall claims he went to a party at the boys' apartment, and his theory (just level with him for a minute) is that "the police stormed into the apartment, threw him out the window and beat the musicians, forcing them to say that they had been robbed." Told this version of events, one of the victims said: "That's definitely not how it went down."
Regardless of his current status in Rikers, where his grandmother used to be a prison guard, Marshall is an aspiring real estate agent, who feels that Bed-Stuy still has plenty of potential. To someone who's interested in buying the building, he has some advice: "I'd say the values on the block are rising." He's a natural!

Mexican inmate tries to escape in suitcase wheeled by wife after conjugal visit

Police say a woman was caught trying to sneak her common-law-husband out of a Mexican prison in a suitcase following a conjugal visit.

A spokesman for police in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo says staff at the prison in Chetumal noticed that the woman seemed nervous and was pulling a black, wheeled suitcase that looked bulky.
Spokesman Gerardo Campos said Monday that prison guards checked the bag of 19-year-old Maria del Mar Arjona and found inmate Juan Ramirez Tijerina curled up inside in the fetal position.
Ramirez is serving a 20-year sentence for a 2007 conviction for illegal weapons possession.
Arjona was arrested and charges are pending.