MORGANTON, N.C.,None — Deputies in Morganton said an inmate at the Foothills Correctional Institute ordered an assault on someone even as he faced charges in an attack on someone else.
Joseph Bishop, 20, is accused of ordering a hit on another inmate.
"He ordered the hit on a fellow inmate because that inmate was disrespecting his gang members by saying he was a member of the gang when he wasn't," Burke County Detective David South said.
The inmate was stabbed with crudely-fashioned weapons made of nails and screws bound to toilet paper cardboard and tied together with dental floss, deputies said. Bishop denies any involvement in the attack, but openly admits to being a member of a gang called Folk Nation.
"Street, prison … [the gang] follows you everywhere," he said.
On Wednesday, a prison employee was hospitalized after deputies said she was attacked inside of her office.
Deputies said they think Bishop ordered a fellow gang member to carry out the attack, and also wrote a threatening letter to the employee, who investigates gang activity.
"I want you to know that action is gonna be taken and it's not a matter of if … it's a matter of when," the letter says.
The employee has since been released from the hospital with 10 stitches in her head.
"[There's] a lot of concern, especially when they get to a point where they're actually ordering assaults and assaults are being carried out on fellow officers," Detective Mike Ollis said. "It's very scary."
Investigators have taken out warrants against 19-year-old Dashawn Dove in connection with the assault on the employee.
Bishop is charged with two felonies in the attack on another inmate, but has not been charged in the employee's attack.
WSOC
