Correctional officer killed at Tomoka prison

Officer Donna Fitzgerald

Correctional officer killed at Tomoka prison

STAFF REPORT

DAYTONA BEACH: An inmate accused in the rape and murder of a female correctional officer at Tomoka Correctional Institution has been charged with first-degree murder, authorities said this afternoon.

Donna Fitzgerald of Port Orange was killed about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday by inmate Enoch Hall, authorities said. She has a 20-year-old son.

According to a Sheriff's Office incident report, Hall stabbed Fitzgerald several times with piece of sheet metal formed into a knife. He got the sheet metal from an office inside the PRIDE work building. Fitzgerald was searching for Hall, who hid in a welding shed adjacent to the PRIDE building.

Fitzgerald opened the door to the welding shed and found Hall. When the officer attempted to take custody of Hall, the inmate stabbed her. He then concealed the weapon in a nearby concrete block wall. He later told officers where he hid the knife.

The report mentions nothing of a rape.

At a press conference this afternoon, Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McMeil told reporters correctional officers are not armed. They carry only radios, a chemical agent and an alert device.

PRIDE reconditions school buses, fire trucks and other vehicles. More than $1 million worth of services is produced there and it employs 70 inmates.

Hall, 39, was sentenced to life in prison for a kidnapping in Escambia County in 1993. In that incident, he was also convicted of sexual battery and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, prison records show. In 1992, Hall was convicted of sexual battery in a separate case. Fitzgerald, 50, had worked at Tomoka Correctional for the past 13 years. An internal investigation is under way, he said.

"Words cannot express the sorrow I feel over the loss of our correctional officer," Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil said in a department news release. "The entire department grieves the murder of one of our finest officers, and we pray for the victim's family during this difficult time."

Hall was being held under "close" custody, the highest level at Tomoka Correctional. "Maximum" is the highest security level in Florida's prisons.

The Volusia County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are assisting in the investigation, officials said late Wednesday night. Tomoka Correctional Institution is on Tiger Bay Road in Daytona Beach.

Hall was sent to state prison for raping and beating multiple victims, including abducting a 66-year-old woman from a Pensacola apartment complex. The beating he inflicted on her resulted in partial hearing loss and the loss of her senses of taste and smell, according from news reports at the time.

Before that, Hall was sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping a 23-year-old woman from a Pensacola parking lot Feb. 22, 1992, and taking her to Alabama.