Las Vegas, NV (AP) — A white supremacist gang leader from Las Vegas was identified Wednesday as one of three inmates killed in a prison brawl that left at least nine other inmates injured at Nevada’s maximum-security lockup in rural Ely.
Zackaria Luz and Connor Brown were the inmates killed Tuesday morning at Ely State Prison, White Pine County Sheriff Scott Henriod said in a statement, adding officials were not releasing the third inmate’s name because they were still contacting relatives.
Luz, 43, was identified as a street-level leader among 23 reputed members of the Aryan Warriors white supremacist prison gang in court proceedings in Las Vegas. He was sentenced last year to at least eight years and six months in prison for his conviction on felony racketeering and forgery charges.
Brown, 22, of South Lake Tahoe, California, was serving a seven-to-24 years sentence for robbery with use of a weapon, according to prison records and news reports. He was sentenced in 2021 after pleading guilty to stabbing a gas station clerk and a casino patron in downtown Reno in 2020.
Authorities have not said what prompted the violence. Henriod said sheriff’s deputies were summoned about 9:40 a.m. Tuesday to the prison. The sheriff’s statement did not describe the fight, weapons or injuries that inmates received. Henriod and prison officials said an investigation was ongoing.
The names of injured inmates were not made public and Henriod declined to answer questions about their injuries and where they were being treated. He said some were “life-flighted out of the Ely area for medical treatment.”
No corrections officers were injured, the Nevada Department of Corrections said in a statement.
Prisons spokesman William Quenga provided no additional details Wednesday in response to emailed questions from The Associated Press.
Ely State Prison is one of six Nevada prisons. It has almost 1,200 beds and houses the state’s death row for convicted killers and a lethal injection chamber that has never been used. Nevada has not carried out an execution since 2006.