Inmates in failed prison break to be separated
By CINDY HORSWELL
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 1, 2010, 10:11PM


TDCJ
Juan Quintero, who killed Houston police officer Rodney Johnson in 2006, is one of the inmates who tried to escape from the Polunsky Unit.

Five inmates who tried to escape from the maximum security Texas prison that houses death row will be separated and dispersed to five different units, authorities said Monday.

While investigators cannot yet say whether Friday's attempted prison break from the Polunsky unit near Livingston was planned or spontaneous, they want to avoid any further collaboration even though these inmates have been segregated. Officials said the five, all serving life sentences, tried to scale two perimeter walls topped with barbed wire. Guards in two towers and another walking the fence line shot and wounded three inmates before they surrendered.

Each is now locked in an individual cell for 23 hours each day. The remaining hour is spent in solitary recreation.

[b]Houston police Sgt. Joslyn Johnson, the widow of a Houston police officer fatally shot by one of the five inmates, was shocked to learn that her husband's killer was not already isolated from the general population.

“I was dumbfounded,â€