Newly released report details how killer escaped from Las Vegas-area prison last year

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A newly released report details how a convicted killer briefly escaped last year from a prison northeast of Las Vegas, leading to the resignation of Nevada’s corrections director.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Sunday that Porfirio Duarte-Herrera used lotion and electricity to break out of his cell window at the Southern Desert Correctional Center in Indian Springs on Sept. 23, 2022.

According to a 16-page report released Thursday by the Nevada Department of Corrections and obtained by the newspaper, Duarte-Herrera needed only four minutes to scale three fences and knew the prison towers at the medium-security facility weren’t being manned at the time of his escape.

Duarte-Herrera, 43, was arrested five days later.

The newspaper said state officials complained that the department under Daniels didn’t notify law enforcement until four days after learning that Duarte-Herrera could not be found at the prison.

The escape was denounced by then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak as “a serious and unacceptable breach of protocol” and led to Corrections Director Charles Daniels’ resignation a week after the escape occurred, the Review-Journal said.

The report said the 5-foot-4, 135-pound Duarte-Herrera fashioned a “dummy” made from cardboard and towels and put it in his bunk prior on the evening of his escape.

Duarte-Herrera told authorities he hid behind a partition for five hours and used leather gloves that prison yard labor inmates would don to avoid injuring his hands as he climbed over two razor-wired fences.

Investigators determined Duarte-Herrera broke through the cell window after using an electronic device he made as a transducer to supply electrical current through lotion smeared on the metal slats attached to the window frame to erode it.

The report said Duarte-Herrera told authorities that he walked about 37 miles (60 kilometers) to reach Las Vegas. He was later arrested by police at a bus station as he tried to get a ride to Tijuana, Mexico.

Duarte-Herrera, from Nicaragua, was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 after being convicted of first-degree murder.

He was accused of killing a hot dog stand vendor using a motion-activated bomb in a hotel-casino’s parking lot on the Las Vegas Strip.

After being captured last year, Duarte-Herrera was moved to the maximum-security Ely State Prison more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Las Vegas.