The Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. — Investigators are looking into whether a state Department of Correction administrator who oversees roadside cleaning crews allowed a group of inmates to work without proper safety equipment the day one of them died after an accident on Interstate 40, officials said.
The inmate, 31-year-old Charles Wilson, died Tuesday, several hours after a sport-utility vehicle smashed into an empty prison van that rolled onto him while he worked in the median.
Family members and several inmates and employees at Wake Correctional Center have said that a corrections officer told his supervisor that the cleaning crew didn’t have proper equipment, such as signs that warn motorists. But they allege the supervisor ignored the information.
“I hold them accountable as well as the driver,” said Markeita Wilson, Charles Wilson’s sister. “They shouldn’t have (gone). To me, they didn’t care that humans were going out there. They didn’t care about safety.”
Keith Acree, a correction department spokesman, said Thursday that the allegations have been passed on to investigators.
“The signs are required. We know they should have been there. We’re trying to find answers as to what happened that morning,” he said.
Also Thursday, the motorist who veered off the road and hit the prison van was charged with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle, authorities said.
Frederick Henri Beaujeu-Dufour, 37, of Clinton, was charged in Wilson’s death.
Beaujeu-Dufour turned himself in Thursday morning, said Raleigh Police Department spokesman Jim Sughrue.
Wilson had been serving time at the minimum-security Wake Correctional Center. He was scheduled to be released in August 2009, after serving an eight-year sentence for being a habitual felon, Acree said.
Wilson was part of a six-member crew that was cleaning the roadside near Lake Wheeler Road.