Three inmates were killed and nine others were injured after a Tuesday brawl at a maximum-security prison in Nevada, the state’s Department of Corrections said.
The fight is believed to have started as the result of a feud between two rival gangs at Ely State Prison, the state’s only maximum-security facility, local television station KLAS reported.
No correctional officers were injured in the altercation, NDOC officials said.
The names of those who died and the conditions of those who were injured were not immediately available.
Some local news outlets have referred to their injuries as stabbings.
According to KLAS, multiple law enforcement agencies and corrections officers from other state prisons reported to Ely State Prison Tuesday afternoon.
Visitations at every DOC facility in Nevada remain suspended “until further notice,” according to a message on the department’s website.
A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Corrections didn’t’ immediately return a request for comment Wednesday morning.
Ely State Prison, the “designated maximum-security prison for the State of Nevada” employs over 400 people and can house up to 1,183 inmates, according to a description on its website.
Located some nine miles north of Ely, a remote mining town “sitting at Nevada’s eastern edge of the ‘Loneliest Road in America,’” the facility holds all 60 of the state’s death row population, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.