A fellow inmate at Colorado’s highest-security prison assaulted convicted mass killer James Holmes, who is serving numerous life sentences for killing a dozen people at a movie theater in 2012. Holmes was not injured when 27-year-old Mark “Slim” Daniels lunged at Holmes and “took a few swings at him a few times” while Holmes was being escorted down a hallway on October 8, reports the Denver Post. “It was in passing,” explained a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections.
The Denver Post first heard of the news through a letter whose writer claimed to be Daniels. Officials immediately tried to play down the incident. “It was not an attack, it was a very minor incident in passing in a hallway,” the spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections told CNN.
Daniels will be charged administratively with assault on Holmes and a correctional officer who got between the two inmates but was not injured, reports Reuters. In August, a judge sentenced Holmes to one life term for each of the 12 people he killed in addition to 3,318 years for attempted murders. During the trial, jurors were shown video of an interview between Holmes and a psychiatrist in which he said he could hear other prisoners calling him “a baby killer and stuff.”
