Your Horror Story Of The Day

Nothing here to say but this: I recommend today’s Daily News cover story. An immigrant from Sierra Leone was jailed. Then things got worse:

At 19, Fornah was jailed on a robbery charge and a series of misdemeanors in December 2005 after a dispute with his girlfriend in which he took her car keys. Unable to post bail, he was locked up at the city’s Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. The night of March 24, 2006, just two weeks before prosecutors dropped all charges against him, his mentally deranged cell mate savagely beat and raped him in a dark, isolated cell while top prison officials debated how to rescue him, according to internal prison documents obtained by the Daily News.

The stand-off lasted two hours. “I don’t think anyone knew how to handle the situation and meantime, Mohamed [Fornah] is going through his own private hell in there,” said Fornah’s attorney, James D. Famiglio. “It was awful. He was just a mess when they finally pulled him out.”

By the time a rescue team finally busted into the steel cell, Fornah was barely conscious. His eyes were bloodshot from his being repeatedly strangled with a towel. His entire body was covered in feces, documents show. Fornah was rushed to Frankford-Torresdale Hospital, where he spent five days fighting a fever and viral infection caused by ingesting his own feces that his cell mate, Antwone Williams, had crammed down his throat.

Williams admitted he attacked Fornah, but denied raping him, though prosecutors believe otherwise. Williams was sentenced last month to a maximum of five years in prison for aggravated assault.

A Philly.com comment on the article really sums things up nicely: “Please get chris wheeler off the air!!”

Traumatized in Sierra Leone, raped in Philly jail, refugee seeks justice [Daily News]