Dennis Dickerson recounts how he learned about drug trafficking at Angola involving inmates, correctional officers, an FBI informant, and drugs shipped from California.

Twenty-two prison guards and inmates were indicted at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Louisiana.

I was at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in the skilled nursing unit recovering from a broken jaw after I was kicked by a horse. An inmate I knew from Angola came in and was placed in a single lockdown cell.

Since I was able to move around, I walked down the hall to talk to him and find out why he was there. He told me that a guy named Big Mex had put a hit on him because of a package of drugs they had sent to a correctional officer who had been busted. While he was on extended lockdown at Angola, an inmate who worked lockdown had taken the hit and put fentanyl in his breakfast.

He overdosed. They found him in his cell and rushed him to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. He was put on life support for seven days and later transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center to be placed on protection.

Shortly afterward, I was released back to population, made trusty, and later busted for smuggling 28 grams of meth and 20 cell phones into the prison. I was placed on lockdown for disciplinary reasons.

A few weeks passed, and they placed him on the same lockdown tier with me for disciplinary reasons. One night, I was able to use the phone to call my family, but no one answered. His cell was next to the phone, so he had me call his wife and gave me a note to read to her. So I did. When I read for her to call an FBI agent, it raised a red flag with me.

During that week, we would talk, and he told me he had gotten this new lawyer and was getting resentenced from life to a fixed term of years.

Elayn Hunt Correctional Center transferred me to David Wade Correctional Center for disciplinary reasons, along with others who had been caught for contraband in the prison.

Once at David Wade, we were put on the same tier Big Mex was on.

Come to find out, the FBI had him transferred from Angola because of the investigation. He was sent to David Wade since David Wade is a disciplinary prison.

I was in the cell next to Big Mex, and we started talking about legal work since I had a life sentence in the state of Louisiana under the habitual offender law and he had already done 35 years in the state and had life in the feds.

He then told me why he was at David Wade. I told him I knew who he was talking about, because I had just left that guy at Elayn Hunt.

Come to find out, the guy was an FBI informant, and according to what I learned, he busted the entire drug trafficking ring. Large amounts of heroin, meth, and weed were allegedly being shipped from the cartel in California to Angola and brought in by numerous correctional officers to be sold through numerous inmates. That was when everything started coming together for me.

The package of drugs that had been caught. The hit. The fentanyl in the breakfast. The FBI agent. The new lawyer. The possibility of a reduced sentence. I had been around the informant at Elayn Hunt, and then I was transferred to David Wade and ended up in the cell next to the man he had allegedly informed on.

I was watching the drug trafficking investigation unfold without realizing at first how all the pieces connected.

A few weeks passed, and the United States Attorney’s Office indicted 22 people. The next day, Big Mex was transferred. I later learned that the FBI informant had been brought back to court and got a time cut from life to 20 years. Now he’s at home.

Looking back, it’s strange how I learned about the drug trafficking investigation. Nobody sat me down and explained what was happening. I learned it piece by piece through conversations in hospital units, lockdown cells, prison tiers, and transfers from one Louisiana prison to another. By the time the indictments came down, I had already heard about the case from people caught up in both sides of it.