BRIDGE CITY, La. -- The Jefferson Parish coroner has classified the death of a 17-year-old Bridge City inmate as a homicide.

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Mother Says Prison Told Her Nothing

Emmanuel Narcisse died Thursday after a fight with a guard at the Bridge City Correctional Center for Youth. The coroner said the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

State Corrections Secretary Richard Stalder said the Marrero teenager died at West Jefferson Medical Center about an hour after the 7:15 a.m. fight outside the center's infirmary, where the juveniles were going for their routine pill call.

Neither Stalder nor Narcisse's family would say why Narcisse was incarcerated. The family said only that he had been there for about a month, and that it was his first time time in jail.

Stalder would not say why the fight started.

Narcisse's mother said she had difficulty getting information from prison officials about her son. She said she was not called but instead learned about the death from the teenager's father.

"They didn't tell me the cause of his death, they didn't tell me the reason, they didn't tell me anything about the altercation that brought this on," she said. "They didn't tell me anything."

Stalder said the parish coroner, Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies and state police are investigating, and the U.S. Department of Justice has been notified.

The teenager's death was immediately blasted as further evidence of rampant violence in Louisiana's juvenile prisons.

On the Senate floor, state Sen. Donald Cravins, D-Lafayette, broke the news of the teenager's death to other lawmakers. Cravins said it points to the fact that they need to overhaul the state's juvenile justice system.

David Utter, executive director of the nonprofit Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said he has been contacted by the inmate's family.

Utter's group has pressed the state to reform its juvenile prisons and to close facilities where violence allegedly has occurred.