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Texas Prisoner Kills Prison Employee and Himself
On October 21, 2004, a prisoner at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s 2,800-bed, maximum-security Connely Unit in Kenedy, Texas, killed a prison employee, then committed suicide.
Gary Laskowski, 38, a Texas state prisoner, had been serving a life sentence in TDCJ since 1988 for two counts of aggravated sexual assault from Nueces County. He worked as a janitor assisting the prison’s administrative staff and would have been eligible for parole in 2007. Laskowski had a “clean disciplinary record,” according to TDCJ spokesman Mike Viesca.
Rhonda Osborne, 33, had been a clerk at the prison for five years. She was attacked in a storage closet and died of asphyxiation according to preliminary autopsy results from the Bexar County medical examiner’s office.
Laskowski killed himself by cutting his neck and wrists.
Texas recently enacted new rules making it much more difficult for a prisoners serving time for sex offenses and capital murder to make parole and is applying them retroactively to all prisoners, regardless of when the offense occurred. Perhaps removing prisoners’ hope of making parole was not such a good idea after all.
Sources: Dallas Morning News, Associated Press.
Gary Laskowski, 38, a Texas state prisoner, had been serving a life sentence in TDCJ since 1988 for two counts of aggravated sexual assault from Nueces County. He worked as a janitor assisting the prison’s administrative staff and would have been eligible for parole in 2007. Laskowski had a “clean disciplinary record,” according to TDCJ spokesman Mike Viesca.
Rhonda Osborne, 33, had been a clerk at the prison for five years. She was attacked in a storage closet and died of asphyxiation according to preliminary autopsy results from the Bexar County medical examiner’s office.
Laskowski killed himself by cutting his neck and wrists.
Texas recently enacted new rules making it much more difficult for a prisoners serving time for sex offenses and capital murder to make parole and is applying them retroactively to all prisoners, regardless of when the offense occurred. Perhaps removing prisoners’ hope of making parole was not such a good idea after all.
Sources: Dallas Morning News, Associated Press.
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