A notorious prisoner killed three fellow inmates, including two convicted pedophiles, during a prison brawl in Arizona on Friday, the state’s Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry has said.
The incident occurred at Arizona State Prison Complex Tucson.
State officials have named the three dead men as Saul Alvarez, Thorne Harnage, and Donald Lashley.
A preliminary report alleges that Wassenaar approached the men with the intent to harm them. No further details about the killing have been made public.
The only named suspect is another inmate named Ricky Wassenaar, who is already serving 16 life sentences after he was convicted of leading a prisoner’s revolt in 2004. That incident resulted in one of the longest prisoner standoffs in US history.
Alvarez was sent to prison in 2004 after he was convicted in Maricopa County of first-degree murder.
Harnage arrived in prison last year after he was convicted in Pima County of engaging in sexual conduct with a minor. According to the Pima County Attorney’s Office, Harnage abused his niece when she was 7 or 8 years old, and it took prosecutors more than seven years to put him away.
Lashley arrived at the facility in 2023 after he was convicted in Pima County on four counts of sexual conduct with a minor under 15 years old, two with a minor under 12 years old, three counts of molestation of a child, and two counts of sexual conduct with a minor under eighteen. He had been sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Wassenaar was convicted in 2005 on 19 charges, including kidnapping, dangerous or deadly assault by prisoner, aggravated assault, sexual assault, and first-degree escape after he was involved in a 2004 hostage situation at a state prison in Lewis.
During that incident, Wassenaar and another man, Steven Coy, were convicted of taking a pair of prison guards hostage for 15 days. One of the guards was a woman and claimed the inmates raped her several times during the standoff.
He is currently serving 16 life sentences for his involvement in the standoff.
Investigators have not publicly shared a motive for the killings at the time of this report.
The prison canceled its visitation hours in response to the recent violence.
According to data from the Arizona Department of Corrections, the number of homicides in its prisons this year is already more than the total number of homicides in 2023 and 2024 combined.
The state counted five total homicides in its prisons during those two years. By February 2025 — the most recent month we have data for — there had already been four homicides in Arizona state prisons. When you add the three deaths from Friday’s killing, that will bring the total up to seven deaths.
