Inmates at Nevada prison sent ‘powdery substance’ to Las Vegas courthouse, NDOC says
By Caitlin Lilly
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LAS VEGAS (KVVU) — The Nevada Department of Corrections announced that two inmates at the Ely State Prison recently sent a “powdery substance” to a Las Vegas courthouse.
According to a news release, the two offenders sent mail containing a powder containing a powdery substance to a Las Vegas courthouse. The mail was delivered on Friday and Monday, NDOC says.
According to the release, at this time, “the substance from one envelope has been identified as a harmless substance, and the other has not yet been identified.”
NDOC says that the incident is under investigation and no injuries or symptomatic responses have been reported.
The department says that it “will conduct an internal investigation into this incident, and any potential charges related to this incident will be referred to the Attorney General’s Office.”
The release says that under NDOC Administrative Regulation 722.10, legal mail and correspondence sent by inmates is not searched before leaving its facilities institutions.
However, NDOC notes that mail that is addressed to the governor, the attorney general or the secretary of state, constitutional officers who make up the Nevada Board of Prison Commissioners, is inspected by NDOC staff before being sealed and sent, according to Administrative Regulation 722.08.
The mail incident comes following a situation at the Southern Desert Correctional Center in which an inmate escaped and was on the run for several days before he was recaptured in downtown Las Vegas.
NDOC had said that the inmate, Porfirio Duarte-Herrera, was missing during a 7 a.m. count on Tuesday, Sept. 27. However, the department then updated that Duarte-Herrera was actually unaccounted for since the Friday before.
Las Vegas police took Duarte-Herrera back into custody as he wasabout to board a bus in an attempt to flee to Tijuana, Mexico.
After being taken back into custody, Duarte-Herrera was moved to maximum-security at Ely State Prison.
Duarte-Herrera, from Nicaragua, was convicted in 2010 of killing a hot dog stand vendor using a motion-activated bomb in a coffee cup atop a car parked at the Luxor hotel-casino.
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