LIVINGSTON, Texas?One inmate was stabbed to death and another severely beaten Thursday in a brawl involving rival prison gangs.

Corrections officers had to use chemical agents to break up the fight, which took place in a runway area outside one of the buildings at the Texas prison system’s Polunsky Unit, prison spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said.

Jessie Hernandez, 32, was stabbed with a sharpened metal rod believed to have been fashioned from a piece of a cooking sheet and pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, Fitzgerald said. He had been serving 30 years for delivery of cocaine and marijuana.

The three other inmates were questioned by prison authorities. At least four of the men were gang members, Fitzgerald said.

The Polunsky Unit, with a capacity of 2,900 inmates, was placed on lockdown. The facility is about 80 miles northeast of Houston.