PANAMA CITY — The State Attorney’s Office will prosecute a Calhoun County Jail guard for the misdemeanor battery of an inmate, officials announced Monday.
Deputy Christopher Doyal is charged with one count of battery against Ventura Brown, an inmate at the Calhoun County Jail. Investigators said evidence shows Doyal used excessive force without lawful justification during an altercation in Brown’s cell on Feb. 24.
The State Attorney’s Office also has video and audio evidence of the incident but would not release those files Monday. In the report, Investigator Jimmy Nolan said “the video clearly shows Doyal swinging at Inmate Brown,” but witnesses did not report seeing Doyal actually hit Brown.
In Brown’s account of the incident, “Doyal began punching him the face with keys he had in his right hand, chipping his front tooth,” before he was taken to a local hospital.
Inmates in neighboring cells recounted hearing Brown pounding on his cell door and yelling before Doyal appeared to investigate the disturbance.
Brown told investigators that a day earlier he slipped on a wet floor and hit his head. He was yelling for his prescribed medication because his head was hurting. And he was using profanity toward Doyal, investigators reported.
During the aletercation Brown was on the phone with his wife. He put the phone down, stepped back from the door and put his hands behind his back when Doyal arrived, he said.
Brown’s wife could not make out what happened from there, she told investigators, but Brown said the door flew open and Doyal took a swing at him, which he side-stepped. At that time, Doyal pushed Brown against the wall then onto his bunk and began choking him before Doyal eventually punched him in the face with the keys, he said.
A trustee inmate, Christopher Phillips, said he and other inmates were eating when Doyal came around asking who was beating on the door. When Doyal went into the cell, they heard hollering and ran into the hall to see. He watched Doyal detain Brown to his bunk but did not see either man throw a punch, he said.
Phillips said, before separating the two, he heard Doyal say: “What have I done to you, what have I done to you,” a couple times, Nolan reported.
Brown was taken to a local hospital for treatment to his injuries and is currently detained in the Jackson County Jail.