Huge brawl erupts at maximum-security prison as three killed and 20 charged

A total of 20 people have been charged in connection to a vicious prison brawl at a maximum-security prison in eastern Nevada that saw three inmates killed and others injured, prosecutors say.

The final arrest in relation to the violent outburst last year was made on March 5, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday. Inmates Anthony Williams, 41, Connor Brown, 22, and Zacharia Luz, 42, were killed when an enormous fight broke out at Ely State Prison on July 30.

At least nine other inmates were also injured, White Pine County Sheriff Scott Henriod said at the time that some were “life-flighted out of the Ely area for medical treatment.” No officers were injured, the Nevada Department of Corrections said.

The prison was put on lockdown after the incident, which prison spokeswoman Teri Vance said at the time “was not a riot”. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office told Fox5 that the brawl was gang-related.

Brown and Luz, who was the leader of a white supremacist group, had both been involved in a previous prison riot. Luz was serving seven to 18 years for racketeering and forgery, Brown was serving seven to 24 years for robbery with use of a deadly weapon and Williams was serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for being a habitual criminal.

Charges filed against the defendants include first-degree murder and attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon with intent to promote or assist a criminal gang, according to authorities. It is not clear how many of the 20 defendants face those charges.

“The pursuit of justice does not stop at the prison gates, and those responsible for the deaths of the three inmates at Ely State Prison will be held accountable,” Attorney General Aaron D. Ford said. He added: “We remain committed to ensuring that violence and misconduct within our state correctional system are met with the full force of the law.”

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. Conditions behind bars in Nevada have drawn criticism from inmates and advocates, particularly during hot summers and cold winters.

In December 2022, several Ely State Prison inmates held a hunger strike over what advocates and some family members described as unsafe conditions and inadequate food portions. Lombardo, in one of his first acts after being sworn in as governor in January 2023, rehired the current state prisons director, James Dzurenda.

That followed a tumultuous several months marked by inmate violence, staffing shortages, the escape and recapture days later of a convicted Las Vegas Strip casino parking lot bomber, and the resignation of the prisons chief who had held the job for almost three years. Dzurenda had resigned in 2019 after three years as Nevada prisons director and went on to serve as a corrections consultant in North Las Vegas and was appointed sheriff of Nassau County on Long Island in New York.

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