Inmate dead after fight in Missouri prison

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Authorities on Tuesday were investigating a fight at a southern Missouri prison that resulted in the death of a convicted sex offender.

Pleasant J. Hurst, 48, was punched in the head and injured during an altercation Saturday in the gymnasium of the South Central Correctional Center in Licking. He was pronounced dead later that day at a hospital in Houston, Mo., said Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Hauswirth.

Hurst was serving a 52-year sentence from St. Charles County for first-degree child molestation, sexual misconduct with a child, kidnapping and attempted kidnapping.

The department's inspector general's office is looking into a motive for the fight, including the potential that it was related to the nature of Hurst's convictions, Hauswirth said. An autopsy has been ordered to determine the exact cause of death.

Hauswirth declined to identify the other inmate involved in the fight, but said he did not believe the other inmate was injured or that any weapons were used in the attack.

Department investigators are to report their findings to the Texas County prosecutor, Hauswirth said.

The prosecutor did not immediately return a telephone call Tuesday.

At Hurst's 2003 trial, prosecutors said he grabbed a 10-year-old girl at a Wal-Mart store in O'Fallon in December 2002 and forced her to lie on the floor while threatening to hurt her and the child's family. The girl ignored the command and began to scream, attracting the attention of employees who chased Hurst as he tried to flee the store. Witnesses eventually caught him and held him for police.

Hurst also had several previous convictions for sex offenses, according to Department of Corrections records.

In 1985, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for two sodomy convictions in Lincoln County, but those were overturned on appeal in 1987 and Hurst was released from prison.

He was convicted in 1989 on two counts of first-degree sexual abuse in St. Charles County and two counts of sexual assault from Pike County. He was released from prison in February 1993.