Two People Killed in a Single Day at Alabama’s Elmore Prison

Damon Calhoun, 35, and Londell Nunn Jr., 34, were stabbed to death last week at Elmore Correctional Facility in Elmore, Alabama, where the homicide rate is more than 20 times the national average. The murders occurred on the morning of January 15 in a housing dormitory.

Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Nunn are the second and third people stabbed to death at Elmore in the past three months. Mikheal Gilliam, 28, was fatally stabbed in a dormitory at Elmore on October 26.

Damon Calhoun was classified as minimum custody and had served 12 years of an 18-year sentence for third-degree burglary and robbery.

Londell Nunn was classified as medium custody and had served six years of a 10-year sentence for robbery.

Elmore's annual homicide rate is more than 20 times the national average over the past three years, with at least nine homicides at the prison since 2023. This may be an undercount, as the Alabama Department of Correction has stopped performing autopsies on all state prisoners and frequently does not publicly report deaths until months or years after the fact.

At the same time, Elmore has seen a sharp increase in nonfatal prisoner assaults, with 46 reported in 2022, 81 in 2023, and 107 in 2024.

Elmore Correctional Facility is a medium security men's prison in central Alabama that incarcerates approximately 1,170 people.

EJI has documented a longstanding pattern of serious violence at Elmore, with unchecked violence between incarcerated people as well as fatal beatings executed or instigated by correctional officers.

In 2019, the Justice Department notified the State of Alabama and the Department of Corrections that the uncontrolled violence and conditions at Elmore and 11 other men's prisons across the state violated the constitutional rights of the people confined there.

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