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A Hampton Roads Regional Jail inmate is charged with first-degree murder in his cellmate’s death, which police say came after a fight between the two.
Thomas Fludd, 55, was found unresponsive in the jail about 1 p.m. Feb. 19, and could not be revived, according to a press release the jail sent Thursday. Portsmouth police charged Shamsiddin Muhammad Abdullah with killing Fludd, who was one of four people to die in the jail in February.
In addition to sharing a cell, the men worked in the jail’s kitchen. Fludd died in their cell, according to a criminal complaint written by a police detective and filed in General District Court.
Abdullah, also 55, had been in the jail on charges of grand larceny, entering a structure to commit a crime, possession of stolen property and failing to appear for a court hearing.
The regional jail is one of the deadliest in the nation and by far, the deadliest in the state. At least 53 people have died in the jail’s custody since 2008. The second highest tally in Virginia, according to a national examination of deaths in the country’s largest jails by Reuters, was 34.
Two people with knowledge of the jail’s inner workings — and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t want to get the people who work there in trouble — told The Virginian-Pilot earlier this month that one of the four recent deaths was a homicide. Both Portsmouth police and the jail declined to say there was an open murder investigation at the time.
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Fludd’s wife, Faith Gay, told The Pilot on March 4 that they hadn’t been contacted by police or the jail about Fludd’s death. A detective had called Fludd’s sister, who lives in another state.
“I’m going to die in here,” Fludd told Gay several times in the days leading up to his death.
“He said it the entire week before,” she said in an interview. “He had gotten into it with an officer. Someone didn’t like him. That’s why he feared for his life.”
Jail surveillance video from Feb. 19 showed Abdullah assaulting Fludd once they returned to their cell after working in the kitchen, Portsmouth police Detective J.D. Thomas wrote in a criminal complaint.
An inmate closed the cell door while another stood watch as Abdullah and Fludd fought, Thomas wrote. After, Abdullah left the cell shirtless, carrying a tote, and took a shower before police got there, the court document says.
Numerous inmates and jail staff members were in and out of the cell before police and medics arrived.
Police later found a bloody T-shirt in Abdullah’s tote, according to the court document.
A witness told police an argument started in the kitchen while the men were working, and a jail officer had to separate Abdullah and Fludd, the court document says. Abdullah told Fludd he was “going to send him home” when they got back to their pod, the witness told police.
“When asked what that meant, the witness said death,” the detective wrote in the complaint.
The doctor who conducted Fludd’s autopsy told police he died “from over exerting himself during the fight and all his underlying health problems,” the detective wrote. He also wrote that the doctor was “working the case as a homicide.”
In an email Thursday, the state medical examiner’s Tidewater district administrator, Donna Price, said Fludd’s cause and manner of death are listed as “pending.” She said she could not speak to the specifics of the investigation.
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About two weeks before Fludd’s death, a different inmate who also worked in the kitchen died.
Keith Andre Robinson, 49, was starting his morning baking preparations when he collapsed at 1:46 a.m. Feb. 4, according to the jail. Robinson died of “acute coronary insufficiency due to hypertensive cardiovascular disease,” and his manner of death was determined to be natural, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
The regional jail, which has long-standing agreements to take inmates from Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Hampton and Newport News, is grappling with a series of crises.
It remains under rare federal oversight following a 2018 U.S. Department of Justice report that found conditions there violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It is facing a severe staffing shortage, with more than 100 vacant jail officer positions. That’s up from about 90 vacancies in December and leaves it without more than a third of its guards. That, along with the revocation of accreditation by the American Correctional Association, led the Norfolk and Chesapeake sheriffs to announce on March 12 that they are pulling all of their inmates out of the jail. Portsmouth stopped sending people there in 2019.
The board, which is composed of the sheriffs as well as council members and officials from each of the five cities that use it, met on March 17. If the murder was discussed in any detail, however, it happened in the closed session portion of the meeting.
Gary Harki, 757-446-2370, gary.harki@pilotonline.com