Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Inmate stabbed to death at High Desert State Prison

Updated Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016 | 3:02 p.m.

A Nevada prison inmate serving time in an auto theft case died after he was stabbed at a corrections facility outside Las Vegas, state prison officials said.

Andrew Ryan Thurgood, 26, was pronounced dead Monday at the High Desert State Prison infirmary after he was stabbed during a fight with two other inmates in a facility dayroom, the Nevada Department of Corrections said in a statement

Investigators identified two alleged assailants, but corrections spokeswoman Brooke Keast said Tuesday their names weren't immediately made public.

Thurgood had been serving 12 to 34 months at the prison in Indian Springs following his conviction last year in Las Vegas on a felony charge of attempted possession of a stolen vehicle.

His attorney in that case, Carl Arnold, said he didn't remember anything unusual about Thurgood or his case.

Thurgood had prior felony convictions in 2009 for attempted battery and possession of a stolen vehicle, according to court records.

His death was in the same prison where one inmate was killed and another was wounded in November 2014 by a guard firing a shotgun at them in a shower hallway.

In a federal wrongful lawsuit against prison officials, the family of the dead man, Carlos Manuel Perez Jr., says that guards created a "gladiator-like scenario" to let two handcuffed inmates fight before a corrections officer trainee fired four shotgun blasts.

The wounded inmate, Andrew Arevalo, now 25, also filed a lawsuit accusing the state prisons chief, supervisors and guards of deliberate indifference and use of excessive force.

Both lawsuits are pending.

High Desert State Prison is Nevada's largest and busiest, holding almost 4,200 medium- and high-risk prisoners. The state corrections department houses about 13,500 inmates in 18 facilities statewide.

Arevalo's lawyer, Alexis Plunkett, said Tuesday that Arevalo was denied parole after a hearing in November, and he is now being held in isolation at the state's maximum-security prison in Ely.

Arevalo was sentenced in 2013 to two to six years for a burglary conviction.

Perez, 28, was a two-time felon who had been serving 18 months to four years for hitting a man in the head with a two-by-four board in downtown Las Vegas two days before Thanksgiving 2012.

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