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Inquest Set Into Fatal Pen StabbingBy JOE AARONDistrict Attorney Bert Prince Jsaid he will defer filing specific charges until he “has a full and complete report from the state po-! lice.”[i Prince, who said he was not of-jficially notified* of the occurrence ! until this morning, assigned Assistant District Attorney Charles B, Barker as his representative at today's Inquest which will be conducted by Justice of the Peace E. C. Cortez.Authorities said the fight appeared to result from racial tensions and longtime grudges. There was no move against the prison administration. Warden Morris Abram said today all prisoners I have been locked up while deeper - probe is made into the flare-up.The dead man is Speight Parks, 31, convicted in 1951 of shooting to death a Hobbs policeman and a store clerk. He was serving two life sentences for the double murder.Two other convicts involved in the fight were in “serious” condition at St. Vincent Hospital. Fran-| cisco Lopez, sentenced from Hidal-| go County in 1949 to a 50 to 60 year sentence for rape, was seriously I wounded in the abdomen, the attendant physician reported,Joe “Freckles’* Montano, sentenced from Santa Fe County in 1951 for possession of marijuana to 18 months to three years on each of two counts was also wounded in the stomach. His doctor said the knife actually entered the stomach. He said the two will remain In the hospital for a “considerable” time until their conditions are safer,The fight/ featuring an assortment of home-made knives which the convicts had concealed, began in the prison yard shortly after noon yesterday, prison authorities said.Abram is investigating. He said there had apparently been a feud among Parks and other inmates for some time. Some of those in the battle were Anglos, others of i Spanish-American extraction, i The warden said no convicts have I been locked in solitary confinement but ail prisoners have been restrict-|ed to their cells while “we try to ! ferret out more information,” he •said.Parks was convicted In 1951 of taking the gun of Hobbs policeman Robert B. Butler, 68, and killing him and store clerk Ira Grantham, 63.Parks* body will be returned tojPortales, his home town, for burial.*
Newspaper Details
Santa Fe New Mexican
Santa Fe, New Mexico, US
Thu, Jan 22, 1953
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Myrna A.
USA 23 Sep 2020
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