A killing, then threats and a coverup. That's what three former inmates at Dade Correctional Institution say happened on and after June 23, 2012, when Darren Rainey, 50, a mentally ill prisoner, was allegedly locked in a shower by corrections officers as punishment. He was left there for as long as two hours, purportedly howling for mercy as scalding water blasted his body. When he was found by guards, face-up, in the closet-size shower chamber, Rainey's skin had separated from his body and he was dead.
A written record of the 911 call that night, released by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue on Tuesday, shows there was a 22-minute gap between the time corrections officers said they found Rainey's body and the time fire rescue was summoned. A nurse who examined Rainey's body said the corpse was so hot that it exceeded the range on her thermometer. And authorities still have not interviewed a jail inmate who told them in a letter 18 months ago that he was ordered to clean up the Rainey “crime scene.” A second inmate has asserted that Rainey was deliberately tortured for defecating in his cell and refusing to clean it up.