In rioting triggered by racial tensions, more than 2,000 inmates went on a four-hour rampage Saturday at a maximum-security jail in Castaic, leaving one prisoner dead and nearly 50 others injured.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies from throughout the area poured into the North County Correctional Facility, and authorities fired tear gas and pepper balls into dormitories before order was restored.
Sheriff Lee Baca said the entire 21,000-inmate jail system was locked down, with inmates confined to their cells to head off additional violence.
He also said he has begun segregating African American and Latino prisoners in the facility despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting such practices in the state.
"Human life is more important than appearance," Baca told reporters outside the jail, which has a history of racial violence.
The melee erupted about 3:30 p.m. when Latino inmates began throwing bunks and furniture from the upper level of a dormitory onto blacks occupying a lower-level day room, Baca said.
The incident appeared to be retaliation for a stabbing attack two days earlier on a Latino inmate at the downtown Men's Central Jail, the sheriff said.
The core of the melee involved about 200 inmates. But it quickly became "massive chaos," Baca said.
Inmates used fists, parts of beds, shoes and anything they could grab in the brawl, he said. More than 200 deputies were needed to quell the violence.
The man killed was identified as Wayne Tiznor, a 45-year-old African American, who appeared to have died from being beaten, Baca said. He was convicted last month of failing to register as a sex offender, officials said. Homicide detectives were investigating the incident.
Twenty inmates with serious injuries were taken to hospitals, and 26 more suffered minor injuries. No deputies were injured. Television helicopters showed a long line of ambulances and paramedic units lined up outside the jail, and rows of tarps were laid out for the injured.
"It is a carry-over, in our opinion, from what is a feud between gangs in the Los Angeles South-Central area," Baca said.
"And that will happen when you bring to jail people who want to continue whatever their war was on the street.... It is essentially a brown-on-black incident today which led to the fighting that occurred in these dorms."
