RENO, Nevada — One of three prisoners who died in a Nevada prison fight This week, it was a member of a white supremacist prison gang who was serving a life sentence for his role in the 2016 murder of a man incarcerated 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 decedents involved in this incident died as a result of 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 who charged in massive extortion case in Las Vegas involving murder, drug trafficking and identity fraud in 2019.
The indictment marks the first time Williams and another person have been charged with the 2016 stabbing death of Andrew Ryan Thurgood in a cell at High Desert State Prison in southern Nevada.
Williams pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Clark County District Court 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 prison sentence for robbery with a deadly weapon, the department said. He was convicted in 2021 after pleading guilty in 2020 to stabbing a gas station attendant and a casino patron in downtown Reno.
Authorities have not said what sparked the violence at the jail this week. Henriod said deputies were called to the jail around 9:40 a.m. Tuesday.
No prison guards were injured, the Nevada Department of Corrections said in a statement.
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 were incarcerated at Ely State Prison held a hunger strike about what lawyers and some family members described as unsafe conditions and insufficient food portions.
Attempts stagnated before it reached the state Legislature last year to respond to a years-long state audit that revealed widespread deficiencies in prison use-of-force policies.
