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Portsmouth prosecutors dropped charges Wednesday against a man accused of killing his cellmate at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail earlier this year.
Shamsiddin Muhammad Abdullah had been facing a first-degree murder charge in the February death of 55-year-old Thomas Fludd.
Prosecutors dropped the case because of “an issue with one or more witnesses,” said Shea Coleman, a prosecutor and spokeswoman for the Commonweath’s Attorney’s Office.
She declined to provide more details, saying the case was ongoing. Prosecutors could bring the charge back later.
At about 1 p.m. Feb. 19, Fludd was found unresponsive and couldn’t be revived, according to the regional jail. He died in the cell he shared with Abdullah.
Surveillance footage from that day showed Abdullah assaulting Fludd when they returned to their cell after working in the jail’s kitchen, according to a criminal complaint filed in General District Court.
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As the two men fought, an inmate shut the cell door while another stood watch, a police detective wrote in the complaint.
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Abdullah then took a shower, and numerous inmates and jail staffers were in and out of the cell before police and medics arrived, the document says.
A witness told police an argument started in the kitchen, and a jail officer had to separate the two men.
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.
Abdullah, 56, was incarcerated at the regional 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.
Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com