HollyMatkinLucasville, OH – A Southern Ohio Correctional Facility officer was attacked and brutally stabbed over 30 times by two convicted murders on Tuesday, a union spokesperson said.
Correction Officer Matthew Mathias remained hospitalized in a trauma intensive care unit, and was listed in stable condition, the Portsmouth Daily Times reported.
Officer Mathias was repeatedly stabbed with metal weapons in the maximum-security prison’s infirmary at 10:41 a.m. by inmates Greg Reinke, 37, and Casey Pigge, 30, according to The Plain Dealer.
“It was bad,” Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA) spokesperson Sally Meckling told the Dayton Daily News. “There were multiple, multiple stab wounds.”
Officer Mathias was airlifted to the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery.
“Matt’s resting now after his long surgery and he’s being closely monitored,” his wife posted on social media, according to the Portsmouth Daily Times.
“He has a collapsed lung, and his other one appeared to have a small laceration. They have chest tubes for these reasons, and he’s getting some help breathing right now so he can rest,” she explained.
“They repaired some lacerations in his colon,” the officer’s wife said. “His hands are cut up also from the tremendous fight he put up being attacked by two inmates.”
Pigge, a three-time convicted murderer, killed his victims in three separate incidents – two of which occurred in the month of February.
Pigge was in prison for the 2008 murder of his ex-girlfriend’s mother when he fatally beat his cellmate in the head with a cinderblock in February of 2016, the Dayton Daily News reported.
In February of 2017, while being transported from a court hearing where he pleaded guilty to killing his cellmate, Pigge beat and strangled another inmate inside the prison bus.
Pigge made note of his pattern of February homicides in a May 1, 2017 letter to another inmate, and wrote that he would “get me another one,” the Portsmouth Daily Times reported.
A clinical psychologist determined that Pigge was mentally impaired, which made him ineligible for capital punishment, according to the Dayton Daily News.
Reinke, the correction officer’s other attacker, shot and killed a man during a robbery in February of 2004.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol was handling the ongoing investigation into the attack on Officer Mathias.