Inmates who believed negotiations still ongoing made a bluff to strengthen their hand: they displayed eight of the hostages on an open walkway, bound and blindfolded, with blades pressed to their throats. Revenge-minded officers fired indiscriminately. Troopers in their vision-obstructing gas masks shot hostages. When the choking, blinding fog of CS gas cleared, scores of bodies littered the ground, writhing or motionless. Nine hostages and twenty-six inmates died immediately, four more of wounds in the days to come.
