When a Prisoner Grabbed a Guard and Made Like He Was Going to Rape Her, His Fellow Inmates Had a Choice. Read on and You'll Agree They Made the Right One.

He said he needed to pass through to get a new mattress.

When she let him in, he grabbed her by the throat and started sexually assaulting her.

An inmate on Rikers Island could have raped a female prison guard Saturday night had it not been for the quick action of other inmates who helped tear open the room and tackle the man as he stood choking the guard, the New York Daily News reported.

A barbed wire fence outside inmate housing on New York's Rikers Island correctional facility in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The inmate accused of the attack is 27-year-old Raleek Young.

Rikers inmate Raleek Young allegedly sexually assaulted a female prison guard and was only stopped when other inmates took action, according to court records. (Image via New York State Department of Correctional Service/New York Daily News)

According to the Daily News, the 290-pound Young entered a Rikers guard watch post around 8:15 p.m. Saturday, telling the guard he needed to pass through to get a new mattress.

Prison sources told the Daily News that the ensuing attack was caught on video.

Young allegedly grabbed the officer, dragging her into a nearby bathroom and keeping her from opening the guard post's security door while he pulled down his pants and started masturbating.

Young is currently serving a five- to 10-year sentence for raping a 13-year-old girl in 2007, the Daily News reported.

His alleged assault on the female guard could have gone further if an unexpected source of aid hadn't come to the rescue: other inmates.

The Daily News reported that several inmates helped guards tear off the watch post's Plexiglass, creating a hole so a skinny inmate could slip in and open the security door, enabling the rest of the inmates to tackle Young.

The Daily News reported that jail authorities at first characterized the attack as a routine “use of force” incident, drawing the fury of jail staff who refused to man their posts on Sunday in protest.

Following the guards' protest, Young was arraigned Monday in  criminal court in the Bronx where he faced new charges including attempted rape, sexual abuse, forcible touching, and assault and harassment.

The female guard was treated at a hospital following the attack.

In this this June 20, 2014, file photo, the sprawling Rikers Island jail complex stands in the foreground with the New York skyline in the climbing into the horizon. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

The incident is only the latest in a spate of troubling news about Rikers.

The New York Times has reported extensively on the inmate-on-inmate and guard-on-inmate violence that plagues the facility, including guards beating inmates so badly that their teeth fly out and inmates, in turn, lashing back at corrections officers.

A February mayoral report on Rikers showed that the inmate-on-inmate violence had jumped from 30.9 incidents per month for every 1,000 prisoners to 34.5, while inmate assaults on staff jumped from 5.1 to 8.7 per month, the Daily News reported.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook acknowledged the critical role inmates played in stopping the Saturday attack.

“I appreciate [them] helping a sister officer because that could have been their mother, wife or sister,” Seabrook told the Daily News, saying that 90 percent of the inmates “are there to do their time and go home.”

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