Inmate At USP Canaan Pleads Guilty To Assaulting An Inmate With A Weapon And Is Sentenced To An Additional Five Years’ Imprisonment

WILKES-BARRE - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Brandon Shields, age 33, formerly of Philadelphia, and currently a federal inmate at the United States Penitentiary at Canaan (USP Canaan), pleaded guilty on September 13, 2018, to assaulting another inmate with a dangerous weapon and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Senior Judge A. Richard Caputo to serve an additional five years in prison. 

According to United States Attorney David J. Freed, the charges stem from an incident on January 7, 2016, in which Shields assaulted another inmate with a homemade weapon in the form of a combination lock attached to a length of cloth.  Shields was indicted by a grand jury in March 2016.

Shields is presently serving a sentence of 110 months in prison for several bank robberies he committed in Philadelphia in 2011 and 2012.  The sentence Shields received yesterday will be served in addition to that sentence.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Prisons Special Investigative Service. Assistant United States Attorney Robert J. O’Hara prosecuted the case.