Wounded prisoner back behind bars

BANGOR – The state prison inmate wounded earlier this week in a police shootout on Main Street in Ellsworth was discharged Tuesday evening from Eastern Maine Medical Center and taken back into police custody.

Rodney E. Williams, 27, of Trenton was discharged between 5 and 6 p.m. Christmas Eve and taken back to the South Windham prison by correctional guards, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

State police had been guarding Williams since he was taken to the hospital after Monday’s shootout.

Williams is now a patient in the prison’s infirmary, McCausland said.

Police say the shootout occurred after Williams hijacked a police cruiser after a court appearance in Belfast on Monday morning. He crashed the car on Main Street in Ellsworth, which was crowded with Christmas shoppers, shortly before exchanging gunfire with police.

Williams was shot in the abdomen by police at the corner of Hancock and Main streets in Ellsworth at about 12:45 p.m. He surrendered about an hour later from the shoe store he had entered and was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center for surgery.

Williams was being returned to the Maine Correctional Center in South Windham when the incident began. He was in prison on a drug trafficking charge and had been brought to Belfast on Sunday night for a court appearance on a recent Waldo County indictment for terrorizing.

No charges have been lodged in Monday’s shooting, McCausland said.

Michael Povich, the district attorney for Hancock and Washington counties, and state police officials will meet soon to discuss which charges are appropriate, McCausland said.