SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — The two South Dakota prison inmates accused of attacking two correctional officers this week have a history of assaulting staffers behind bars.

Lester Monroe received a suspended sentence for simple assault last year in connection with an attack on a Department of Corrections employee back in 2021.

Kyle Jones, has a lengthy record of offenses while serving a sentence for manslaughter, including an assault on a Minnehaha County correctional officer.

Both men could face attempted murder charges following Thursday morning’s attack at the penitentiary.

We dug deeper into Jones’s criminal background, and the anguish he brought to a family following a deadly crash.

Back in 2012, Kyle Jones led police on an pursuit in a stolen vehicle that reached speeds up to 80-miles an hour. During the chase, Jones crashed into a vehicle driven by Jade Thie, killing the father of a 4-year-old boy. Thie’s family shared their heartache over his death, during Jones’s sentencing hearing the following year.

“I will never understand why you chose to do what you did that night, but I know you have put a pain in my life that can never be returned,” Jade Thie’s sister Jacy Frye said in 2013.

The judge sentenced Jones to a maximum of fifty years, saying he had not shown signs of rehabilitation. Jones compiled a 38-page record while he was in jail, including holding a correctional officer around the neck during an attack that brought other officers to the rescue. Jones offered an apology to Thie’s grieving family during his sentencing.

“I am sorry for what I did. Every day, I wish I could go back and change that,” Jones said in 2013.

“The hardest part is obviously the immediate impact with the immediate family of a wife and a brother and son and father. It’s clearly a big loss to those that knew Jade and obviously we felt as well,” Minnehaha County Deputy State’s Attorney Ryan Sage said in 2013.

At the sentencing hearing, Judge Pat Reipel said she hoped Jones’s “behavior mellows with age” but added he was still a danger to the community. A decade later, accused in the attack of two correctional officers, Jones’s behavior may not have mellowed, after all.

Friends of Thie told KELOLAND News immediately following his sentencing that no amount of time behind bars could make up for his death.

The two correctional officers involved in this latest attack have been treated and released.