5th CCSO employee charged since April

The Clayton County Sheriff’s Office says it has arrested its fifth employee in several weeks.

On Wednesday, March 31, Sheriff Levon Allen announced that a contract employee, Iyana Niara Dixon, has been charged with financial transaction card fraud and theft by taking. As of press time, Dixon’s name did not show up in the online inmate search but Allen had published her mugshot on Nixle. Court records show only the warants and that her case is pending. (It is The Clayton Crescent’s policy not to publish mugshots unless an imminent public threat, like a manhunt for an armed suspect, is underway.) According to Allen, Dixon allegedly used an inmate’s credit card without that person’s permission.

On Friday, May 26, two other jail staffers were charged. One, Jessica Castellanos, a nurse, was arrested and charged with violating her oath and providing contraband to inmates. Castellanos made first appearance by Zoom on May 27 and was granted bond Wednesday, according to court records. The other, Tabitha S. Clifton, 31, of Hampton, had arrest warrants out for obstructing an officer and providing contraband to inmates, according to Allen’s Nixle post; court records show the counts as “unavailable” and that the case status is pending with warrants still out as of press time. We’ve left a message with CCSO and will update once a clarification is available.

On Thursday, May 25, Sean William Hollinshead, 34, of Lithonia, a corrections officer, was arrested and charged with criminal neglect and violation of oath for allegedly placing an inmate in a high-risk area of the jail, then allegedly failing to render aid after the inmate was beaten up and stabbed. The inmates allegedly involved in the attack also were charged. Hollinsghead’s case was bound over to Clayton County Superior Court on Tuesday and he was released on bond.

The arrests come in the wake of District Attorney Tasha Mosley’s 64-count RICO indictment, which included a fifth CCSO employee, Sergion Williams, a security specialist in the jail whose job it was to open and close doors and monitor security cameras. (In October 2022, WSB’s Tom Jones reported, Williams had been charged with giving inmates food from the kitchen and charging them through CashApp. Two other security specialists were fired for alleged inappropriate sexual activity.)

Shortly after The Clayton Crescent broke the news of the indictment on April 13, CCSO’s social media manager, Carl Johnson, claimed that CCSO was responsible for the investigation leading to the indictments. Mosley immediately fired back, calling a press conference to say that it had been her team, Senior Investigator Terry Tuck and Chief Investigator Brian Busch, who had cracked the case.

Mosley said Tuck “was the first one to catch it, because basically, without going into any facts [of the case], the sheriff’s department did take out some warrants on some individuals. You go and pull, go through the clerk’s screen on some of these individuals, there will be warrants that the sheriff took out for new crimes. The rest of them, there are no warrants for the crimes that are alleged on this new indictment. So we will be seeking true bill bench warrants on those individuals, which is the majority of the individuals. But from those warrants, and information that came from loved ones and defense attorneys, Investigator Tuck took the lead, basically started going down the road and seeing where that evidence led him.”

At the time, Mosley said, “And understand—this is the first indictment. We’re expecting more.”

Mosley did say CCSO had been cooperating with the DA’s office: “When my investigator has gone over and asked for incident reports dealing with these incidents and stuff, he has been given incident reports for the ones that have incident reports. They have been cooperating. I’m not going to say that they have not.”

In a Nixle post Wednesday night, Allen said he was conducting “Operation Clean House,” writing, “I was very clear to the citizens of Clayton on the campaign trail that if elected I would clean up the streets and the jail of Clayton. Today makes the 3rd arrest of an employee and the investigations are still ongoing. There is nothing you can do to hide. I will find you even if you are hiding in my jail.”

New Order National Human Rights Organization says it will hold a press conference outside the jail on Friday, June 2 at 10:30 a,m. Clayton County Jail. The group says it plans “to demand to meet with the Clayton County Sheriff about the safety and living conditions inside the jail.”