State prison officials said yesterday they are concerned about a security breach at a Mississippi prison that led to a disturbance among Hawai'i inmates and landed two men in the hospital with broken jaws.

The incident began when 20 cell doors in a unit at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility used to confine inmates with suspected gang affiliations popped open unexpectedly at about 2:30 a.m. July 17. About 35 of the 40 inmates in the unit left their cells and two of the prisoners began fighting, said Hawai'i Department of Public Safety spokesman Michael Gaede.

While corrections officers were preoccupied with the brawl, eight inmates rushed into a cell to attack another prisoner, Gaede said.

A Special Operations Response Team used a gas grenade to quell the violence in what prison officials said was the first significant disturbance at the privately run Tallahatchie prison since more than 700 Hawai'i inmates arrived last year.

Gaede said the state has demanded that prison owner Corrections Corp. of America conduct a "high-level investigation." He said Hawai'i officials have not been told yet how the cell doors were opened.

Last year the state paid more than $30 million to CCA and a second company, GRW Corp., to hold more than 1,600 inmates in prisons in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona because there is no room for them in state-run facilities in Hawai'i. All but about 80 of the inmates are in CCA facilities.

The incident at Tallahatchie took place in the Special Housing Incentive Program unit, or SHIP, which is designed to handle the most dangerous and unruly Hawai'i inmates at the prison.

Gaede identified the inmate beaten in his cell as Ronnie J. Lonoaea, 32, who has an extensive history of assaults, including two attacks on prison staff at Tallahatchie. Lonoaea suffered a broken jaw and head injuries.

A preliminary investigation found that "the other guys ran in there to beat him up because he was causing problems for everybody else," Gaede said.

Hawai'i officials are concerned about the sequence of events, he said, because "they were separate but simultaneous incidents, which makes everybody think one was a diversion."

One of the men involved in the initial fight, 25-year-old Scott Lee, also suffered a broken jaw. Both injured inmates were taken to the Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville, Miss., Gaede said.

The whole affair was over in about 10 minutes, he said.

Lee's mother, Sandra Cooper of Kane'ohe, called for a federal investigation into the incident. Cooper said the prison system never notified her that her son had been injured and she does not believe there will be a thorough investigation.

She said her son is not affiliated with any gang, and that Lee was beaten by corrections staff when he was confined at a prison in Florence, Ariz., several years ago.

"With all this stuff that's going on, it's time for the FBI to get involved," she said. "Let's get down to the main point. Who pulled the switch that allowed 35 inmates to leave their cells?"