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CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — A state investigation is underway after a Ross Correctional Institution guard died during an “inmate assault” Christmas morning, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol, charged with investigating what it’s calling an inmate-on-staff homicide, identified 27-year-old Rashawn Cannon as a suspect Thursday afternoon. Cannon was incarcerated for felony assault and gun charges, according to the ODRC’s inmate search, with a likely release date of 2030. OSHP did not say whether it was investigating other suspects.

ODRC first confirmed Correction Officer Andrew Lansing’s death on Wednesday at its Chillicothe-based prison, in a press release describing him as a longtime officer who was “loved by his colleagues.”“To lose a family member on Christmas Day at the hands of someone in our custody is a tragedy,” the statement read. “Instead of going home after his shift to be with his family on this holiday, Officer Lansing made the ultimate sacrifice, and our agency will never be the same.”A spokesperson for Gov. Mike DeWine deferred to the ODRC statement, although DeWine ordered flags to fly at half-staff Thursday.Cannon has since been transferred to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison in Lucasville. Ross Correctional Institution is classified as a medium-high level security state prison.

AFSCME: ‘We believe it was avoidable’

Union leaders are raising alarm bells. OCSEA/AFSCME Local 11 President Chris Mabe said in an interview that even prior to the pandemic, workers were navigating short-staffed facilities. Ross Correction Institution had about 40 vacancies, Mabe said.

“We continually make requests and demands to increase staffing inside of facilities, pull down on some of the programming that is being run when staffing levels are very low, when staffing levels need a more conducive number to resume those programs,” he said. “It feels like the staff has no backing or has had no backing from this administration concerning their safety and security for quite some time.”

The union is penning a letter to DeWine’s office. Among its demands, Mabe said, are placing both ODRC Director Annette Chambers-Smith and the Ross Correctional Institution’s warden on administrative leave pending the state’s investigation.

“We believe it was avoidable,” he said. “We don’t believe that people should be going to work with some kind of subconscious expectation of being harmed or even killed.”

According to Mabe, Lansing had written Cannon up in April for threatening bodily harm and disobedience of direct orders.

Lansing is the second correction officer to die on the job in less than two years. In 2023, Lt. Rodney Osborne was shot and killed during a firearms training exercise at the ODRC training academy. The prison firearms instructor, who was fired after, has since pleaded guilty to negligent homicide.

An incarcerated Ohioan hasn’t killed a correction officer since 1996, according to an ODRC website.