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RIOT IN TENNESEE CENTRAL STATE PENITENTIARY s NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 10. Six persons, three of them prison officials, were wounded today as a small group of convicts made a desperate but short-lived break for freedom from the Central State Penitentiary near here after locking Warden Joe Pope in a cell. One of the officials, a guard named Strickland, was reported to have died from knife wounds shortly after the break, but the report could not be confirmed. Another official, Deputy Warden C. C. Wood, was in a grave condition from bullet wounds, while the condition of the third official, Assistant Warden H. Samson, who also was shot, could not be determined immediately. Earlier reports that a policeman had been killed proved false. Flight of the five convicts in a prison supply truck under the leadership of Lonnie Taylor, life-termer and notorious "escape artist," came to an end in a pitched gun battle on a residential street, during which three of the convicts were wounded and the remaining two were recaptured. Playing the heros role was a WPA engineer, Frank Cox, who halted his small coupe in the path of the fleeing truck and gave the officers a chance to catch up with the fugitives.