Texas Corrections Officer Murdered By Inmate

A Texas corrections officer was beaten to death Wednesday in the northeast Texas prison he worked, as he was escorting a prisoner back to his cell.

The killed corrections officer, Timothy Davison, 47, was conducting an otherwise routine procedure of taking an inmate from a dayroom in the Telford Unit back to his cell when the task turned deadly, the inmate securing a weapon and relentlessly attacking Officer Davison and killing him, reports Fox News.

Prison agency spokesman Jason Clark said many details of how the tragic situation in Texas unfolded, and questions about the weapon used to kill Davison, are “still under investigation.”

CBS News reports, however, that Clark identified the weapon as an iron bar that corrections officers use to open and close the steel delivery slots where meal trays are slipped through to prisoners.

According to Clark, the suspect that killed the corrections officer is 37-year-old Billy Joel Tracy. The inmate was somehow able to get a hold of the iron bar and turn it on Officer Davison, beating and killing the guard before any other fellow corrections officer could come to help.

“Our hearts are deeply saddened by this tragic loss of life,” said executive director of the prison system, Brad Livingston. “This dedicated correctional officer came to work each day determined to make Texas a safe place to live.”

The Telford Unit, the prison where Davison was killed by Tracy, hadn’t had any other notable security problems recently, according to Clark.

“Of course, any time there’s a serious incident like this, there will be a review,” he said. “That’s standard procedure.”

The fallen corrections officer, Timothy Davison, was evacuated from the prison aboard an emergency medical helicopter and flown to a Texarkana hospital about 20 miles away from the prison. Efforts to save Davison’s life were unsuccessful, however, and the corrections officer, who reportedly lived close to the prison and had worked there since December, succumbed to his injuries.

It is the first time a Texas corrections officer has been murdered by an inmate since 2007. In that incident, 59-year-old corrections officer, Susan Canfield, was killed during a melee ignited by two prisoners making a run for it from a work detail outside a prison near Huntsville.

Both of the prisoners responsible for Canfield’s death were caught, and one of them put to death for their part in murdering the corrections officer.

According to prison records, the inmate that killed Timothy Davison, Billy Joel Tracy, is serving a life sentence for robbery and aggravated assault, the now-alleged murder having stacked up at least seven other convictions since 1995, with at least three of those convictions being for going after and attacking corrections officers.

“We will see that the offender who is responsible for this murder will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, Oliver Bell.

Texas prison officials were “processing the crime scene” where corrections officer Davison lost his life, said Clark.

Billy Joel Tracy is one of about 2,900 inmates at the Telford Unit prison, which has now sadly lost one of its corrections officers.

[Image, Texas Department of Corrections via CBS News]