Wednesday, March 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
The Southern Desert Correctional Center was locked down for four days following a knifing by an inmate.
The lockdown was lifted Tuesday morning.
Three inmates argued in the yard outside an inmate store Friday morning. It was two inmates against another, with one getting stabbed, said Howard Skolnik, spokesman for medium-security prison near Indian Springs, 35 miles northwest of Las Vegas, which houses 1,200 inmates.
The inmates' names have not been released.
The inmate was stabbed in the head and neck and suffered superficial injuries. He was treated at the prison without having to be transferred to a hospital, Skolnik said.
Skolnick said investigators were still determining whether the stabbing was gang-related. He said the attack was in the yard "where there were a lot of inmates around, but nobody got involved but those three."
A prison guard, who asked that his name not be used, said two of the inmates belonged to one prison gang and the other to a rival gang.
The stabbing prompted a shakedown of the prison, Skolnik said.
"It was a good reason to have a routine shakedown of the institution," he said. "We generally try to shake down the institutions before the summer because the heat sometimes causes short tempers."
The shakedown was completed Tuesday, Skolnik said. He explained a shakedown as locking inmates in their cells and only allowing them out a wing at a time while searches of each cell are done.
We take the inmates out in restraints, put them in a holding cell and search their cells," he said.
During the shakedown, Skolnik said, one homemade knife was found and "lots of little things, like pictures and books the inmates are not allowed to have."
He described the knife as "really, really primitive."
archive
