COLUMBUS – There was a drone. And some drugs and tobacco. And a fight in a prison yard. But, did one of those things have anything to do with the others?
A drone deposited a package containing enough tobacco for seven packs of smokes, enough marijuana for about 70 joints and a dollop of heroin that could yield more than 100 doses.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
According to the version of the story in the Columbus Dispatch, the airborne delivery sparked a brawl as inmates tussled over the package, though the parcel didn’t ultimately reach its intended target. Corrections officers found it hidden in a rec-yard equipment room.
A report by WBNS 10-TV says the Ohio State Highway Patrol isn’t so sure that’s how the drugs landed behind prison walls and it is not clear if the brawl was a result of the dropoff of contraband or something else.
No matter what, the high-tech flyby at the Mansfield Correctional Institution last week represents a harder-to-fight means of smuggling contraband to those held behind the walls of state prisons.
While prison officials have always been vigilant for visitors, employees and mail transporting illicit materials into prisons, drones are a different, here-and-gone beast in which a remote-control conspirator remains hidden.
Officials at the Mansfield prison didn’t realize the drone had paid a visit until surveillance camera video was reviewed while investigating the fight precipitated by its appearance.
It wasn’t the first appearance of a drone over an Ohio prison. But, state officials could not immediately provide details on the other over flights on Tuesday.