On Dec. 19, 2022, Mbyayenge Mafuta was moved to a segregated unit at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans after telling a guard that he was “hearing voices and they would not stop.” Guards reported that Mafuta had been “screaming and banging things around in his cell,” and Mafuta told one guard that he wanted to kill himself.
The next day, a behavior health coordinator for VitalCore Health Strategies, the private prison medical contractor, sent an email to prison staff. She noted that a mental health professional “was able to check in with Mr. Mafuta and we feel he is okay to come off full precautions and camera status.”
“He was able to process what happened last night and create a plan for being in GP,” the coordinator wrote, using the abbreviation for general population. “He is reporting that being in (the segregation unit) will not help his emotional regulation at this time. No current thoughts of self-harm, harm to others, or wanting to die.”
Based on VitalCore’s directive, Mafuta was returned to cell No. 17 in the prison’s general population “B” unit on Dec. 20.
On Dec. 22 at 6:11 p.m., Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Angela Baker was notified “of a serious assault with life-threatening injuries” at the prison, Baker later wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
When Baker arrived at the jail that night, a prison shift supervisor identified the victim as 55-year-old Jeffrey Hall. His cellmate, Mafuta, was identified in Baker’s report as the offender.
On Jan. 20, the Franklin County State’s Attorney’s Office charged the 21-year-old Mafuta with one count of attempted murder in the second degree related to the case.
Hall died last Friday at the University of Vermont Medical Center, 11 weeks after the assault. An autopsy is pending, and as of Wednesday, the attempted murder charge against Mafuta remained pending. He has not been charged with murder.
Few details have been publicly released in the case. But Baker’s eight-page affidavit, filed on Jan. 13, details what happened in the days leading up to and the moments that followed what corrections officials called an assault. The affidavit includes details of the emails from VitalCore’s staff, along with interviews with five corrections officers and 14 men who were incarcerated near Mafuta’s cell at the time.
The case lays bare the challenges of managing serious mental health needs in a prison population, and prompts questions about the decision to return Mafuta back into a general population unit.
‘Our policy fell short’
Baker wrote that the assault occurred around 2 p.m., about four hours before the affidavit shows she was called out to investigate.
Baker met with two shift supervisors when she arrived at the prison.
“I was advised Hall suffered fractures to his face, internal injuries, and a brain bleed,” Baker wrote. Mafuta and Hall were the only ones in the cell at the time, according to both corrections officers and video footage, and there were no direct witnesses to the assault.
The two men had been cellmates “for only a couple of days,” Baker wrote, describing the cell as “very small and narrow.” No prior incidents had been reported between the two men.
Corrections staff reported that there was a disturbance on the B/C unit during a routine headcount, according to Baker’s affidavit, and as corrections staff responded, Mafuta was seen walking out of his cell with blood on his hands and clothes. Hall was found unconscious in his cell with “a large laceration on the side of his face,” the staff told Baker.
Hall remained unconscious when he was transported to Northwestern Medical Center, and was soon transferred by ambulance to University of Vermont Medical Center. His condition was deemed “too critical” to be transported by helicopter, Baker wrote.
Mafuta was handcuffed and soon returned to the segregated unit. Baker noted that Mafuta “did not have any observable defensive wounds on his body.” She described Mafuta as “quiet but compliant” when meeting with detectives that night, but noted that he declined to speak with police.
In statements given as part of an internal investigation, some of the incarcerated men said they were not surprised by what happened. One reported that Mafuta, who went by the name “Robbie” in prison, had been “acting weird” since returning from segregation.
Another said he wrote a note that he intended for but did not deliver to the supervisors, saying there was “something off” with Mafuta.
“… (H)e keeps looking at me saying that something in his head is telling him what I’m thinking and the way he looks at me and others has me thinking hes going to hurt someone really bad,” he wrote in the note, dated Dec. 12, which was subsequently turned over to Baker.
Vermont Corrections Commissioner Nicholas Deml said Tuesday there will be a series of reviews in the case, including an internal administrative review and a separate medical review “of all the decisions.”
Deml said the mental health review conducted by VitalCore staff that cleared Mafuta for re-entry to the general population will be part of a separate review. He characterized all of the reviews as “ongoing.”
Asked if he thought it was appropriate for Mafuta to be placed back in a general population unit following his report of hearing voices, Deml responded, “We rely on (VitalCore) to make the best medical judgments that they can. I think it is difficult in these situations.”
Deml noted that VitalCore’s screener indicated that Mafuta “wasn’t hearing anything at that point” when he was returned to his shared cell.
VitalCore did not respond to several requests for comment left at its Kansas headquarters and made through the state Department of Corrections.
The commissioner said he could not legally provide information on whether Mafuta was seen in person by VitalCore’s staff, nor could he speak to the duration of the interaction. He also said he was legally bound from sharing information about where Mafuta is currently housed.
Of the state’s six correctional facilities, which had 1,334 people incarcerated on Wednesday, only the Southern State Correctional Facility has a dedicated unit for acute mental health needs.
The 10-bed, single-cell unit houses those who are “psychotic, clinically unstable, acutely suicidal, and at imminent risk of self-harm,” according to Deml, who noted in a follow-up emailed response Wednesday that the unit “is currently and routinely full.”
Asked if there was consideration given to housing Mafuta at the unit, he responded, “As per Department protocol, Mr. Mafuta was regularly seen by mental health staff and was not deemed to require placement in this unit.”
In response to questions about the four-hour lag time in notifying state police, Deml said the protocols in this case were not as well-defined as they are in cases involving the death of an incarcerated person.
“The extent or severity of the assault wasn’t quite clear yet,” Deml said, noting that the unit was sealed off after the ambulance transported Hall to the hospital. He said other matters, including Mafuta’s status, required the attention of staff.
“One thing we learned from the process is that we have very clear protocols for deaths. Because there was not a death, the protocols were not as clear,” he said. “Our policy fell short on that. We have subsequently fixed our policy.”
The amended policy would have an assault reported in the same manner as a death in prison, he added.
Deml said that during his one-and-a-half-year tenure, prison assault cases resulting in serious injury have been rare.
“It’s been pretty low-level violence. People aren’t getting seriously hurt,” Deml said. “This one is an outlier. Unfortunately, it had a horrible outcome.”
‘No longer in DOC custody’
Mafuta had been held at the St. Albans prison following his arrest last Aug. 9 on charges related to a Burlington crime spree in which 33 homes were vandalized. Callers flooded police dispatchers around 5 a.m. that morning with reports of a man throwing objects through windows.
Following that incident, Acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad noted that Mafuta had at least 100 previous encounters with police.
“Given the number of people affected by this morning’s spree, I am hopeful Mr. Mafuta can get the help he needs, but it must be done in a way that truly prevents innocent neighbors from being further victimized,” Murad said.
In a prior vandalism incident, Mafuta called police to report that he had committed the crime and said he was off his medications and wanted to go to jail, according to Murad.
Hall had been held without bail since Nov. 13 on charges of petit larceny, driving a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent and providing false information to police, according to the corrections department.
The Vermont Judiciary recently reported a backlog of cases awaiting trial, with more than 3,300 pending felony and misdemeanor cases on hold for more than two years after the pandemic.
Deml acknowledged that Hall’s charges were relatively low-level crimes.
“I think Mr. Hall was a bit of an outlier” in that regard, Deml said, adding, “We don’t decide who we receive.”
One day after the prison assault, a judge waived Hall’s bail. Baker noted as much in her affidavit, adding that Hall “was no longer in DOC custody.”
Reached by phone Tuesday, Hall’s sister, who lives in Milton, reserved comment on the case until she spoke with her lawyer.
Matthew Valerio, the state’s defender general, said Tuesday that he could not comment on the case since his office is representing Mafuta. Valerio’s department also includes the state’s Prisoners’ Rights Office, which investigates prison-related deaths.
Franklin County State’s Attorney John Lavoie said Wednesday he was awaiting Hall’s autopsy results before making any decision on upgrading the attempted murder charge pending against Mafuta.
Alan Keays contributed to this story.
