Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors say it is still too ear­ly to de­scribe the death of in­mate Aki­no Pur­cell as mur­der, as en­quiries con­tin­ue in­to the cir­cum­stances that led to his death.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the Prison Ser­vice, Pur­cell re­port­ed­ly at­tacked prison of­fi­cers, which led to a phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion in which he was beat­en at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca, on March 14.

The state­ment re­port­ed that of­fi­cers had to use “law­ful force” in re­sponse.

Pur­cell was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex that day but was dis­charged and re­turned to the prison’s in­fir­mary.

Pur­cell re­port­ed­ly col­lapsed at the in­fir­mary and was tak­en to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was de­clared dead ear­ly on the morn­ing of March 15.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, po­lice said Pur­cell’s cause of death was be­lieved to be due to mul­ti­ple blunt force in­juries and at­tempt­ed lig­a­ture stran­gu­la­tion.

The of­fi­cer said prison of­fi­cers gave their state­ments to po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors short­ly af­ter Pur­cell’s death, but in­sist­ed that it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine whether it could be clas­si­fied as mur­der.

“It’s not as sim­ple to de­ter­mine it as yet,” the of­fi­cer said.

“The ques­tion is whether or not they were in com­pli­ance with their use of force pol­i­cy.”

The of­fi­cer said homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors were work­ing joint­ly with the Arou­ca CID as part of the en­quiry.

Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe for com­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.