Inmate stabbed at Richland County detention center sues county
An inmate who was stabbed in the head by another inmate at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center last year has filed a lawsuit against Richland County and its sheriff’s department.
Chad Andrews was being housed at the detention center — which received a scathing report from the U.S. Department of Justice early last year for its “culture of violence” — when he was attacked and stabbed multiple times in the head by his cellmate, according to a lawsuit filed in Richland County in mid-February.
A day before the March 20 attack, a person acting as Andrews’ power of attorney — who was named in the suit only by his first name, Patrick — came to the county’s detention center to request that Andrews be moved over fears for his safety, the lawsuit said. An investigator told Patrick he would “speak with [Andrews] the following day.”
Andrews was attacked the next day, according to the suit. He was transported to Prisma Health Richland Hospital where staples were used to close the wounds on his head, the suit said. When he arrived back at the detention center following treatment, he was put back into the same unit, according to the suit.
The lawsuit named the county and its law enforcement and detention operations conducted through the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. Richland County oversees the jail’s operations, not the sheriff’s department. It’s unclear why the sheriff’s department is named.
Benjamin Limbaugh, an attorney with the Columbia-based Jeffcoat Firm who is representing Andrews, declined to comment on the case when reached by a reporter with The State.
“Richland County has taken continued measures to implement planned improvements to the facility, and ... will continue to comply with all federal, state and local laws that are applicable to this and all other matters,” Keywa Henderson, a spokesperson for the county, told The State in an email.
The stabbing in March 2025 followed years of issues at the jail and came two months after the justice department released its findings following an investigation into the jail. The jail had four times the number of stabbings compared to the jail for Miami/Dade County in Florida, despite having a quarter of the Florida jail’s detainee population, the report published in January 2025 said.
Following that report, Richland County Administrator Leonardo Brown issued a statement saying county officials disagreed with the findings, The State reported at the time. Brown said that many of the facts in the report were “outdated” and did not reflect the extent of the improvements that had been made.
