Crucial Surveillance Video Missing in Nevada Prisoner’s Homicide Caused by Guards
In August 2024, a nine-month investigation by the office of Melanie Rouse, Coroner of Nevada’s Clark County, concluded that the death of state prisoner Patrick Odale, 39, was a homicide. Odale was killed when guards pepper-sprayed him and left him shackled him face-down at Southern Desert Correctional Center in December 2023. Disturbingly, a gap in surveillance video omitted crucial moments leading up to his death.
The Coroner’s report blamed Odale’s death on “positional and mechanical asphyxia” caused when guards restrained him face-down with his hands cuffed behind his back. Low levels of two drugs—methamphetamine and animal sedative xylazine—were found in the prisoner’s blood, and the report deemed those a “major contributor” to his death. Initial reports by the state Department of Corrections (DOC) mentioned neither factor.
DOC has released no information identifying the number of guards involved or their names, or the source of the drugs found in Odale’s system. The unnamed guards reportedly claimed that he was “erratic and growling” when they pepper-sprayed him and tossed him in a tool storage room. When he began “thrashing” around the room, they restrained him and carried him to the prison infirmary, where several doses of Narcan opioid-reversal medication failed to save him.
But surveillance video showed only the guards carrying the restrained prisoner face-down to the infirmary before cutting abruptly to show staffers there administering CPR on Odale, who by then was lying face-up. His handcuffs had also been moved from behind him to his front side.
O’Dale was serving a sentence of up to two years, handed down in 2023 for carrying a stolen credit card and a concealed weapon. The father of two had just received approval for a visit from his children. But they didn’t get to see him before he died, according to their mother, Amy Estrada.
Source: AP News
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