Fulton County Sheriff’s Office Investigators Charge Inmate Resident in Fulton County Jail Assault
The mission of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office is service through laser-focused efforts to protect the citizens of Fulton County with coordinated law enforcement operations, special strategic teams, and community outreach methods. The Sheriff’s Office is constitutionally responsible for the security of all
courtrooms and the administration and operation of the Fulton County Jail. But the jail, locally known as Rice Street, has woefully failed at protecting and seeing to the welfare of those incarcerated there.
On Wednesday, Oct. 1, another inmate was brutally attacked in the facility.
Fulton County Sheriff’s Office Investigators have charged current Fulton County Jail inmate resident Shania White, age 27, with aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and tampering with evidence – felony. The charges stem from an attack on another inmate resident, Tyriana Ledbetter, age 20, who is currently hospitalized in critical condition and on a breathing tube.
Inmate resident Ledbetter’s family met with Sheriff Patrick “Pat” Labat, who visited with her at the hospital.
This investigation is ongoing, but just one of many involving safety conditions at the jail.
In a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Fulton County jail was described as “abhorrent, unconstitutional” and a violation of civil rights.
After a 16-month study, federal officials released a 97-page report outlining the multiple issues within the jail located on Rice Street in Atlanta. The report revealed that authorities at the jail failed to protect inmates from violent encounters including homicides, stabbings, and sexual abuse. Guards at the jail were also accused of the overuse of violence against inmates and using solitary confinement in ways that were unconstitutional and discriminatory.
The report also detailed unsanitary conditions such as pest infestations, broken toilets, and standing water and exposed wire.
In 2023, 10 inmates died at the jail, and in 2024, that number reportedly dropped to five.
But in June of this year, two men who had been incarcerated in Fulton County Jail for over a year died in custody last week for unrelated reasons, bringing the number of 2025 deaths at the jail to four in the first six months of the year.
Shon Disola and Benjamin Pike were the third and fourth deaths in custody this year, just one shy of last year’s total of five inmate deaths. Fulton County has long been plagued by overcrowding and understaffing in its jail, which has led to dozens of deaths and accounts of abuse in the past five years alone.
