Authorities were searching Tuesday for a convicted 42-year-old bombmaker who escaped from a Nevada prison where he was serving a life sentence for a fatal explosion in 2007 outside a Las Vegas Strip complex.
Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered an investigation into the incident after saying Tuesday night that he had learned the fugitive had disappeared from the medium-security prison since the beginning of the weekend.
“This is unacceptable,” Sisolak said in a statement.
Officials didn’t realize until Tuesday morning that Porfirio Duarte-Herrera had disappeared during a count at the South Desert Correctional Center near Las Vegas. A member of the state’s Department of Corrections said search groups were looking for him.
Duarte-Herrera, of Niautomobileagua, convicted in 2010 of killing a hot dog vendor with a motion-activated bomb in a cup of coffee atop a car parked at the Luxor hotel and casino.
Records show his co-defendant, Omar Rueda-Denvers, remained in custody Tuesday. The 47-year-old Guatemalan is serving a life sentence in Nevada for murder, attempted murder, explosives and other charges.
A jury in Clark County District Court has pardoned the two men the death penalty for the killing of Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio, whom prosecutors know as the boyfriend of Rueda-Denvers’ ex-girlfriend.
Prosecutors said jealousy was the reason for the attack on the top floor of a two-story parking lot. The explosion, in the first place, raised fears of a terrorist attack on the Strip.
Authorities described Duarte-Herrera as five feet four inches and 13 five pounds tall, with brown eyes and brown hair.
Sisolak said he had ordered prison officials to “conduct and complete a thorough investigation into this occasion as quickly as possible. “
“This kind of security breach will be allowed and the culprits will be held accountable,” he said.
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