- Porfirio Duarte-Herrera was serving a life sentence for a deadly 2007 explosion outside a Las Vegas Strip resort.
- His co-defendant, Omar Rueda-Denvers, is still in jail.
- Governor Steve Sisolak ordered an investigation into what happened.
Authorities were looking for a 42-year-old convicted bombmaker who escaped from a Nevada prison where he was serving a life sentence for a deadly 2007 explosion outside a Las Vegas Strip resort.
Governor Steve Sisolak announced late Tuesday that his office had discovered that the prisoner had been missing from the medium-security prison since early Saturday. He then ordered an investigation into what happened.
Sisolak said in a statement, “This is unacceptable.”
Officials didn’t notice Porfirio Duarte-Herrera wasn’t there until Tuesday morning when they did a head count at the Southern Desert Correctional Center near Las Vegas.
A statement from the state Department of Corrections said that people were looking for him.
Nicaraguan Duarte-Herrera was found guilty in 2010 of killing a man who was selling hot dogs from a stand by putting a bomb in a coffee cup on top of a parked car at the Luxor hotel-casino.
The bomb went off when someone moved the car.
His co-defendant, Omar Rueda-Denvers, was still in jail on Tuesday, according to the records.
The 47-year-old man from Guatemala is in a different Nevada prison serving a life sentence for murder, attempted murder, explosives, and other crimes.
In the killing of Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio, who was the boyfriend of Rueda’s ex-girlfriend, Denver, a Clark County District Court jury decided not to give the death penalty to either of the two men.
Prosecutors said that the attack on the second floor of a parking garage was caused by jealousy. At first, people thought the blast was a terrorist attack on the Strip.
Officials said that Duarte-Herrera was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, weighed 135 pounds, and had brown hair and eyes.
Sisolak said that his office had told corrections officials to “conduct and complete a thorough investigation into this event as quickly as possible.”
“This kind of security lapse cannot be permitted and those responsible will be held responsible,” he stated.
[embedpost slug=”/xi-jinpings-public-appearance-dispelled-rumours-of-his-arrest/”]
