Four Matsqui prisoners stabbed in Saturday night melee

Four prisoners at Abbotsford’s Matsqui Institution were taken to hospital Saturday with stab wounds after a large fight broke out in one of the living units at the prison.

John Randle, Pacific regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, said the conflict involved between 20 and 25 prisoners — making for a very volatile situation for his members.

“It’s pretty huge, especially for a medium-security institution,” Randle said of the melee. “This is one of the more serious ones that I’ve heard of in a long time.”

He said that with so many inmates involved “staff were responding and entering to a completely unknown circumstance.”

“There are reports of multiple inmates having knives and officers doing what they could to make sure that everyone was safe — especially those four who suffered stab wounds to keep them alive until we could get paramedics and firefighters into the institution,” Randle said.