Inmates Fought Over Contraband After Airborne Delivery

Companies like Amazon may not be able to deliver packages by UAV yet, but maybe that's just because they're concerned about following all those pesky laws and rules. Such was not the case for someone reportedly delivering drugs and tobacco to a prison in Ohio using a small UAV.

Multiple media outlets including Fox and CNN report that that when a fight broke out among about 75 inmates at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Mansfild, OH last week, corrections officers found that they had been fighting over a package of tobacco, marijuana, and heroin. It wasn't until surveillance tapes were reviewed that prison officials saw how the package had arrived in the yard ... it had been dropped there by a small UAV. 

The package had been dropped in to the north yard, but it was tossed over the fence into the south yard during the melee over the drugs.  The Columbus Dispatch reports that the 6.6 grams of heroin alone could make about 140 individual doses if it were only half-pure.

Officers broke up the fight using pepper spray, and the package was eventually found in an equipment room.

While prison officials will not offer specifics for security reasons, they say that it is not the first time a UAV has been used to drop contraband into the prison. Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said that they are "taking a broad approach to increasing staff awareness and detection."

(Image from file)

FMI: www.drc.ohio.gov