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 murder at another Nevada prison, authorities said Friday.
The local county sheriff identified Anthony Williams, 41, as the third of three people killed in Tuesday’s fight at the Nevada maximum security prison in rural Ely. Nine other prisoners were injured.
Prison and state authorities have released few details since then, although White Pine County Sheriff Scott Henriod confirmed Friday that all three men died from stab wounds or “multiple sharp force injuries.”
“This is an ongoing investigation,” Henriod said in an email to The Associated Press.
The other previously identified victims were Connor Brown, 22, of South Lake Tahoe, California, and Zacharia Luz, 42, of Las Vegas.
Luz was identified as the street leader of the white supremacist prison gang Aryan Warriors. He and Williams were among 23 reputed gang members who were indicted in a sweeping racketeering case in Las Vegas involving murder, drug trafficking and identity theft in 2019.
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 took the death penalty off the table. He was also convicted of being a habitual criminal and sentenced to life in prison without parole at Ely Prison, about 40 miles west of the Utah line, the Nevada Department of Corrections said.
Luz was sentenced last year to seven to 18 years in prison for his conviction on racketeering and forgery charges, the department said.
Brown was serving a sentence of seven to 20 years for robbery with a deadly weapon, the department said. He was sentenced in 2021 after pleading guilty to stabbing a gas station employee and a casino customer in downtown Reno in 2020.
Authorities have not said what prompted the violence at the prison this week. Henriod said sheriff’s deputies were summoned around 9:40 a.m. Tuesday.
No corrections officers were injured, corrections officials said.
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 any executions since 2006.
Conditions behind bars in the state have drawn criticism from advocates, especially during hot summers and cold winters. As of December 2022, several people incarcerated at Ely State Prison went on a hunger strike about what advocates and some family members described as unsafe conditions and inadequate food portions.
Efforts stalled before coming to the state Legislature last year to respond to a yearlong state audit that found widespread deficiencies in prison use-of-force policies.
