Two more Nevada officers placed on leave in prison escape probe
RENO — Two additional correctional officers have been placed on paid administrative leave in an investigation into the escape of a prisoner from a Southern Nevada correctional facility last month, an official said Monday.
This brings to eight the number of officers placed on leave in connection with the escape.
William Gittere, acting director for the Nevada Department of Corrections, told state officials that the officers had been placed on paid leave while the incident is under investigation by the department’s inspector general’s office.
“Currently, there is new leadership of the department and eight officers are on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of that investigation,” Gittere said during a Board of State Prison Commissioners meeting.
The board consists of Gov. Steve Sisolak, Attorney General Aaron Ford and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske. Monday’s meeting was the board’s first since the department’s former director Charles Daniels resigned on Sept. 30 at Sisolak’s request.
Daniels’ resignation came after a man convicted in a deadly 2007 Luxor bombing, Porfirio Duarte-Herrera, escaped from the Southern Desert Correctional Facility. He was free for days before the prison enacted its escape protocols.
Gittere called the incident “the worst possible scenario” and said officers were alerted to Duarte-Herrera’s escape by another offender. Duarte-Herrera was found and arrested while boarding a bus headed for Tijuana on Sept. 28.
Six prison employees were initially placed on paid administrative leave following the incident.
The department has initiated “more than a dozen” new security measures at the Southern Desert Correctional Center, according to Gittere.
“Those measures will ensure that they are all secure and safely operating considering the personnel we have left, the activities that we can realistically support and the current condition of our physical security barriers,” he said of the state’s correctional facilities.
Gittere said he couldn’t comment further on the investigation, but said its results, along with a “management assessment of the root contributing factors,” would be submitted to the governor’s office.
Contact Taylor R. Avery at TAvery@reviewjournal.com. Follow @travery98 on Twitter.
