RENO, Nev. (AP) — One of three inmates killed in a Nevada prison fight this week was a member of a white supremacist prison gang who was serving a life sentence for his role in a 2016 killing at another Nevada prison, authorities said Friday.
The local county sheriff identified Anthony Williams, 41, as the third of three people killed Tuesday in a fight at Nevada's maximum-security prison in rural Ely. Nine other inmates were wounded.
Prison and state officials have released few details since then, though White Pine County Sheriff Scott Henriod confirmed Friday that all three men died of stab wounds or “multiple sharp force injuries.”
“This is an ongoing investigation,” Henriod said in an email to The Associated Press.
The other victims previously identified were Connor Brown, 22, of South Lake Tahoe, California, and Zacharia Luz, 42, of Las Vegas.
Luz was identified as a street leader of the Aryan Warriors white supremacist prison gang. He and Williams were among 23 alleged members of the gang charged in 2019 in a sprawling Las Vegas racketeering case involving murder, drug trafficking and identity theft.
That indictment linked Williams and another person to the 2016 stabbing death of Andrew Ryan Thurgood in a cell at High Desert State Prison in southern Nevada.
Williams pleaded guilty to open murder in Las Vegas in 2021 in a plea deal that removed the death penalty. He was also convicted of being a repeat offender and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Ely, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of the Utah border, according to the Nevada Department of Corrections.
Luz was sentenced last year to prison terms ranging from seven to 18 years for his extortion and forgery conviction, the ministry said.
Brown was serving a seven- to 20-year sentence for robbery with a deadly weapon, the department said. He was sentenced in 2021 after pleading guilty to stabbing a gas station attendant and a casino guest in downtown Reno in 2020.
Authorities have not said what sparked the violence at the jail this week. Henriod said deputies were called to the scene around 9:40 a.m. Tuesday.
According to prison officials, no guards were injured.
Ely State Prison is one of six prisons in Nevada. It has nearly 1,200 beds and houses the state's death row for convicted murderers and a lethal injection chamber that has never been used. Nevada has not carried out an execution since 2006.
Conditions behind bars in the state have drawn criticism from advocates, particularly during hot summers and cold winters. In December 2022, several people incarcerated at Ely State Prison staged a hunger strike over what advocates and some family members described as unsafe conditions and inadequate food portions.
Efforts to respond to a years-long state investigation that found widespread shortcomings in prison use-of-force policies failed last year.
