By Ryan Fatica
Bessemer, Alabama — At around 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, August 13, Derrol Shaw took an opportunity to get free. Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for murders he committed when he was 18, caged in some of the worst prison conditions in the country, subjected to levels of violence he said are akin to a “war zone,” Shaw was fed up.
“All us got a limit. Shit. Everything do,” said Shaw, in a Facebook live video he recorded during the incident on a smuggled cell phone. “I can’t take this shit no more. For real.”
Shaw, who was incarcerated at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama, got his hands on a gun. It is currently unclear how Shaw obtained the gun, but sources within the prison say guards sometimes carry guns on their shifts in clear violation of Department of Corrections policy.
While the exact timeline of what happened next is blurry, Shaw described in the Facebook video telling a group of officers to lie down on the ground in an office. “All y’all police that was laying on the floor in that office, y’all ass better tell the story right… I made it clear multiple times that I wasn’t trying to hurt none of y’all as long as y’all didn’t buck, you know, and try no goofy shit.”
According to a source who spoke with Shaw three days after the incident, Shaw described taking a vest from a female officer, locking her in the guard station, and taking off across the prison grounds—scaling razor wire fences, sliding down the pole for a basketball hoop, jumping off a roof, and getting cut up so bad on razor wire he thought he’d “bleed out.”
“I was just trying to go,” said Shaw in the Facebook video, apparently meaning he was trying to escape the prison. “You know? But that wasn’t in the cards.”
At this point, law enforcement from multiple agencies had begun arriving at the facility and Shaw realized he was more likely to be shot than to successfully escape. Bleeding profusely, desperate, believing he was about to die, Shaw called 911 for medical help. Finally, he was able to make it back to the dorms where he knew he’d be safe, for the time being.
Antonio Nichols, who is incarcerated at Donaldson, told Unicorn Riot that when Shaw got back to the dorms, he went around and opened all the doors. “He said whatever he had going on, it went bad,” recounted Nicols. Shaw also told Nichols that nobody got hurt but him.
Videos Shaw recorded from within the dorm show him bleeding from his forearm, drinking a sports drink, and smoking marijuana while his friends and comrades congratulate him. “The realest ni**a on the motherfucking planet,” says one.
“About an hour after that, he was over there bleeding out,” said Nichols. “So I went over there to check on him, and he was laying on the bed. So, the best idea was to take the gun and put it in the garbage can and take it out to the cops.”
“The only way he was going to get medical help was the gun had to come out first,” Nichols explained.
Nichols put the gun into a garbage can and dragged the garbage can out of the dorm and signaled to the guard in the tower that they wanted to turn the gun over. “I pointed in the garbage can, like hey the gun’s in the garbage can, where you want me to put it?” Nichols recounted.
The guard told Nichols to drag the garbage can over to the fence, where a group of armed officers were waiting. The officers pointed their guns at Nichols before handcuffing him. He was released shortly thereafter without charges.
The officers then shook down the dorms and extracted Shaw, who other prisoners had helped into a wheelchair. Shaw was in handcuffs by around 11 a.m. or noon, according to the source who spoke with him.
After being taken into custody, Shaw was transferred to the infirmary at Kilby Correctional Facility. Shaw said he was beaten by officers twice during the transfer—once by a captain in the transport van and once by an unknown number of officers in a small room at Kilby.
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