One Delaware prison officer dead, one in hospital after uprising

One male prison officer was killed and a female colleague has been hospitalized after they were held hostage overnight by inmates at a men's prison in Delaware, state officials said on Thursday.

The hostages were removed by police at about 5 a.m. from the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in the town of Smyrna, where an uprising began on Wednesday, Delaware's Department of Correction said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear how the male correctional officer died. The statement said he was found unresponsive when police breached the building where he was being held.

'This was a long and agonizing situation,” Delaware Governor John Carney said in a statement. 'Our priority now will be to determine what happened and how this happened ... and we will make whatever changes are necessary to ensure nothing like it ever happens again.”

The female officer was alert and talking and being treated at a hospital, the department said.

Two other workers were released on Wednesday and one was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, Delaware State Police spokesman Sergeant Richard Bartz told reporters.

The incident, which prompted a lockdown of prisons statewide, started at about 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday when a correction officer radioed for help from the C building, which houses more than 100 inmates, Bartz said.

Inmates had been demanding better conditions and wanted to speak with senior officials, the News Journal of Delaware reported, citing phone calls with people inside the prison that were relayed through prisoners' relatives.

The prison, 40 miles south of the city of Wilmington, holds about 2,500 inmates, including some with death sentences, according to the prison's website.

Armored vehicles, police SWAT teams and emergency medical personnel converged on the prison, and aerial video from the local WPVI television station had shown dozens of uniformed officers massed outside in formation.