By GARRETT NEESE,

The Houghton Daily Mining Gazette

BARAGA — Soon, three of the four prison staffers attacked by inmates at Baraga Correctional Facility Thursday should be back at work, a Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman said.

Five inmates assaulted the workers Thursday morning while they were watching activities in one of the Level V yards behind the housing unit, spokesman Chris Gautz said. Level V is the highest level of security in state prisons.

Any reason for the incident is still unknown.

“I haven’t seen anything new on potential motivation, but it was clearly a coordinated attack on the staff, so we’re going to continue to investigate and find the reason for this,” he said.

The five inmates punched the staff members in the head, neck and face, Gautz said. Other staff members were able to break up the attack with tasers and chemical agents.

“Obviously, that’s what they’re trained to do, but that’s a tense situation those staff were running into it,” he said. “They didn’t blink, they ran into it to save their fellow officers.”

All four of the staff members were treated and released. Two sustained concussions and other injuries in the incident.

Two of the staff members were able to come back to work that afternoon. One of the other two is expected to return to light duty “very soon,” Gautz said.

One of the workers suffered serious injuries in the attack, and will remain off work for a longer period.

An emergency response team was sent over from Marquette to conduct searches and look for contraband or drugs to which the prisoners may have had access, Gautz said.

The five inmates have been split between the two other maximum-security prisons in Michigan, Gautz said. Michigan State Police is conducting an investigation and will forward its report to the prosecutor’s office.

“I hope they see this fully through the system and that this is taken seriously, that this goes through the courts and they see additional time on their sentence because of this,” he said.

The deputy director of MDOC talked with the staffers after their attack. A wellness team was also made available to them and their families.

“As serious as the physical injuries to the staff were, we know the mental piece is going to last far longer than the physical scars will… we want to make sure they have the tools they need to make it through not only the physical piece but the mental piece,” Gautz said.