As reported on NJ.Com, a man serving a 30-year prison sentence for robbery and kidnapping now faces accusations he tried to beat a female corrections officer to death in February.

 

Fuquan Alexander, 29, was indicted last week by a Mercer County grand jury on charges of first-degree attempted murder and first-degree aggravated assault. 

 

Alexander was locked up at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton when, on Feb. 1, he allegedly attacked senior corrections officer Elegia Then, wounding her so severely she was hospitalized for weeks with brain damage and still has not been able to return to work.

 

Then said she was letting inmates out of their cells to shower that Saturday afternoon when she was attacked in the prison’s 2 Right Housing Unit, according to Lance Lopez Sr., the president of Policemen’s Benevolent Association Local 105.

 

Then’s partner was working on another floor at the time of the assault, Lopez said. A preliminary investigation suggests it was another inmate who pressed the riot alarm and summoned other officers, he said.

 

Then was initially taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Hamilton before being transferred to the hospital’s New Brunswick location. She was treated for cuts to her cheek and eyebrow, bruises to her nose and right eye, and pain on her upper lip and the back of her head. She initially seemed okay, but her cognitive skills began to deteriorate as hours and days went on, Lopez said.

 

Alexander was transferred out of the prison after the attack, apparently to ensure his own safety, and is now housed at Northern State Prison in Newark, according to Department of Corrections records. He was convicted in 2010 on a slew of charges stemming from a February 2008 carjacking and kidnapping in Essex County.