Private prison inmate stabbed over paint job

Latest violence involved suspected member of El Salvadoran gang

YOUNGSTOWN -- An inmate at a local prison is in stable condition after being stabbed during a fight.

A Youngstown police report states that officers responded to CoreCivic's Northeast Ohio Correctional Center on Hubbard Road on Wednesday afternoon. Security officers at the prison showed them surveillance video of a fight that happened around 3:45 p.m. in a common area.

The report states that two inmates, Monroe Merrell and Manuel Erazo-Alvarado, were painting steps in the area when another inmate walked through the fresh paint. The two became irate with the other man and a fight broke out at the top of the steps.

Merrell allegedly shoved and punched the other inmate and the two of them fell to the floor. The report states that the video shows Erazo-Alvarado pulled a large metal shank from his pants and stabbed the unnamed inmate multiple times in the left shoulder and back.

The report states that the weapon looked like it was made out of quarter-inch steel from a bunk and shaped and sharpened into a knife, about 13 inches long from tip to handle.

The report states that the inmate was sent to the hospital with several cuts and puncture wounds. The video apparently shows that prison guards responded quickly and separated the inmates within about a minute.

The report states that Merrell and Erazo-Alvarado were placed in separate cells under lockdown, and the other inmate was transported to the hospital. He was later reported to be in stable condition.

Security told police that Erazo-Alvarado is in prison awaiting trial on a murder charge and is believed to be affiliated with the Salvadoran gang MS-13. Police took the weapon as evidence.

A U.S. Department of Justice press release from March 2025 and reporting from the Baltimore Banner show that Erazo-Alvarado, also known as "Castigo," was indicted in February 2025 in the U.S. District Court for Maryland. He is charged with murder in aid of racketeering - a federal offense that carries mandatory life imprisonment or potentially the death penalty.

Federal prosecutors allege that Erazo-Alvarado and his co-defendant, Erick Guillen Pleitez, are MS-13 members who participated in an August 2017 killing to maintain or improve their standing in the gang.

The Banner connects the charge to the killing of David Rivera, 16, of Annapolis. The indictment states that Rivera was taken to a park near Edgewater, Maryland, where MS-13 members killed him with machetes because they believed he belonged to a rival gang. His remains were not recovered until June 2024.

More than 20 stabbings, at least one of them fatal, have been reported at the prison since 2024.

Earlier this week, a federal judge rejected part of a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit filed by the mother of an inmate who died of a drug overdose at NEOCC.

The Vindicator reported on Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson dismissed the federal portion of a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Bonnie Billings, whose son, Montel Williams, died at NEOCC in October 2023, after ingesting fentanyl or another dangerous drug.

Billings alleged that CoreCivic, former Warden Douglas Fender and unidentified employees violated Williams' Eighth Amendment rights by failing to protect him from a known overdose risk. Pearson found that the complaint lacked NEOCC-specific facts showing widespread drug availability, recent overdoses known to officials, inadequate staffing or screening procedures, or how the drugs reached Williams.