My very last day in adult corrections was one to remember. I was arriving for my last shift when I was asked if I wanted to take part in a raid at one of the fire prison camps operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. There was good intel about a firearm that had been smuggled into the camp. Needless to say, this is one of the most potentially deadly situations correctional staff can face.
This was primarily a CERT operation, but I was asked to join because of my search skills. The entire camp was taken down at gunpoint as we moved through each section, searching and handcuffing inmates inside their dorms and moving them to a secured area as we progressed. We found dope, cellphones, tobacco and other contraband — but no gun. And that was a wrap for me as far as adult corrections was concerned.
Thankfully, firearms smuggled into correctional facilities are rare. But rare doesn’t mean impossible. The system relies on their rarity; otherwise escapes and deadly incidents would be far more common.
A recent case in Mount Vernon, a much more serious situation in which a gun was smuggled in and used to shoot another inmate, prompted me to examine several of the most serious firearms smuggling incidents in correctional history.
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Mount Vernon transport shooting — October 16, 2025
On October 16, 2025, two Mount Vernon police officers were transporting five inmates to the Westchester County Jail when they heard a single gunshot from the back of the van. An inmate had been shot in the leg. The shooter was 32-year-old Louis Soto, arrested the day before for forcible touching and with no significant prior criminal history.
Soto had smuggled a loaded .22-caliber Rohm revolver onto the transport van, concealed in his buttocks. The weapon had one spent round and four live rounds remaining when recovered. Law enforcement sources confirmed Soto hid the gun in his body cavity, and officers failed to detect it during arrest or intake processing.
The revelation was damning. Handheld wand searches were optional at the Mount Vernon Police Department before this incident.
“Preliminary findings indicate the firearm should have been detected prior to the transport. The use of it was optional previously,” Police Chief Marcel Olifiers said at a news conference.
Five officers — Sergeant Joseph Diaz and Officers Omar Bryce, Sonjea Collins, Cody Housen and Christian Pacheco — were suspended without pay for 30 days. The department immediately made metal detector wands mandatory for all prisoner processing.
“Based on our established training, policies and procedures, early findings indicate that the firearm should have been detected during arrest or intake,” the department stated. “While a 2022 policy update limited the broad use of strip searches, a properly conducted frisk or authorized strip search should have revealed the weapon.”
The victim survived with non-life-threatening injuries. Soto now faces additional charges, including criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, assault in the first degree and reckless endangerment.
Operational lessons: Body cavity smuggling is one of the most difficult contraband detection challenges in corrections and law enforcement. But this incident exposes a more fundamental failure: when security measures like metal detector wands are optional, officers treat them as suggestions rather than critical safety protocols. The decision to limit strip searches — while important for civil rights — created a vulnerability that inadequate alternative screening failed to address. Five officers were suspended, one inmate was shot and community trust was damaged because “optional” became “ignored.”
The four deadliest firearms smuggling incidents
4. New Orleans police transport — Officer Daryle Holloway murdered (2015)
Death toll: 1
Date: June 6, 2015
Location: New Orleans Police Department transport vehicle, Louisiana
Travis Boys, 32, arrested for domestic violence, was being transported to jail by Officer Daryle Holloway. Despite being handcuffed and searched, Boys had successfully smuggled a handgun. While Holloway drove, Boys pulled out the weapon and shot him. The vehicle crashed into a utility pole, and Boys escaped, though he was captured the next day.
Boys was convicted of first-degree murder in 2017 and sentenced to life without parole. The officer who conducted the initial arrest and search, Wardell Johnson, was sentenced to five years in prison for malfeasance and obstruction of justice — establishing a precedent that officers who fail to properly search arrestees can be held criminally responsible when negligence results in death.
Operational lessons: Search procedures during arrest are not merely policy; they are life-or-death protocols. Holloway’s death and Johnson’s conviction sent shockwaves through law enforcement, emphasizing accountability in prisoner handling. Transport situations are particularly vulnerable because officers are focused on logistics rather than constant security vigilance.
3. Robeson Correctional Center — Officer Earl Cranston Strickland killed (1969)
Death toll: 1 (plus multi-location hostage crisis)
Date: June 2, 1969
Location: Robeson Correctional Center, Lumberton, North Carolina
During a chaplain service at Robeson Correctional Center, two inmates gained access to a smuggled weapon. They shot and killed Officer Earl Cranston Strickland, 33, whose pregnant wife survived him. The inmates took a second officer hostage and escaped in Strickland’s car.
The violence escalated beyond the prison. The escapees drove to a nearby farm, took a family of four hostage and barricaded themselves inside. Three family members escaped overnight and alerted police. The next day, surrounded by law enforcement, the inmates surrendered.
The shooter, incarcerated since 1961 for murder, kidnapping and robbery, received a life sentence for Strickland’s death. He was released from prison in 1991.
Operational lessons: Smuggled weapons endanger far more than staff. They enable escapes and threaten entire communities. Religious services — while vital for rehabilitation — require rigorous security. The era’s heightened prison activism also contributed to increased violence. This weapon, smuggled during a chaplain service, illustrates how program-based blind spots can become lethal vulnerabilities.
2. Smith State Prison — Aureon Grace and Jaydrekus Hart murder-suicide (2024)
Death toll: 2
Date: June 16, 2024
Location: Smith State Prison, Glennville, Georgia
At 4:30 a.m., inmate Jaydrekus Hart, 34, shot Aramark food service employee Aureon Shavea Grace, 24, while she worked in the prison kitchen, then turned the gun on himself.
The investigation revealed a staggering security breakdown. The gun had been smuggled into the prison in a package thrown over the fence between June 30 and July 10, 2023, meaning it remained inside for more than a year. The package also contained tobacco, clothing and drugs, allegedly intended to facilitate an escape.
Even more troubling, investigators had photographic evidence of the gun as early as January 1, 2024, sent via contraband cellphones. A personal relationship had developed between Hart and Grace, also documented through contraband phones seized between 2020 and 2024.
Despite knowing a gun was present, authorities took no action. Two people died as a result.
This is believed to be the first case in Georgia history in which an inmate fatally shot someone inside a state prison. Remarkably, the warden remained in place despite this incident and the murder of Correctional Officer Robert Clark eight months earlier.
Operational lessons: This case reflects failure at every level: perimeter security, contraband interdiction, intelligence processing and command decision-making. Contraband cellphones facilitated criminal activity and also provided evidence that went unaddressed. Intelligence is meaningless without action, and leadership that ignores credible threats bears responsibility for preventable deaths. Aureon Grace went to work that morning and never returned home because officials who knew better did nothing.
1. San Quentin massacre — George Jackson (1971)
Death toll: 6 (plus 3 seriously wounded)
Date: August 21, 1971
Location: San Quentin State Prison, Marin County, California
This remains the most infamous firearms smuggling incident in U.S. prison history and the deadliest day in San Quentin’s long history.
George Jackson, 28, serving one year to life for a $70 robbery, had just met with his civil rights attorney, Stephen Bingham, when Officer Urbano Rubiaco Jr. noticed a metallic object in Jackson’s hair. Jackson produced a 9mm Spanish Astra pistol and declared, “Gentlemen, the dragon has come.”
He ordered Rubiaco to open cells, releasing inmates who overpowered guards. Five hostages — three correctional officers and two white prisoner trustees — were murdered inside Jackson’s cell. Jackson and inmate Johnny Spain escaped into the yard, where a tower guard shot Jackson dead as he ran toward the wall.
The massacre lasted roughly 30 minutes. Three additional officers survived despite having their throats slashed.
Six inmates, the “San Quentin Six,” were charged with murder. Only Johnny Spain was convicted of first-degree murder after a lengthy 1976 trial. Attorney Bingham, accused of smuggling the gun, fled and remained a fugitive for 13 years before returning to face trial, where he was acquitted in 1986. The gun was believed to have been concealed either in an Afro wig or a tape recorder. The exact method remains unproven.
Operational lessons: Maximum security units are designed to prevent exactly this type of incident, yet even the most restrictive environments remain vulnerable. Attorney-client visits, while constitutionally protected, must be balanced with appropriate security measures. The speed and brutality of the incident show how catastrophic the consequences can be when a firearm enters a secure facility. Multiple strip searches still failed to detect the weapon, underscoring the sophistication of smuggling methods and the challenges posed by outside support.
Critical takeaways
A review of these five incidents, spanning 1969 to 2025, reveals several critical patterns.
Across these incidents, several pathways for firearm introduction appear repeatedly. Body cavity concealment, as seen in Mount Vernon, remains one of the most difficult challenges for intake and transport staff. Failed booking and intake searches contributed both to the New Orleans murder of Officer Daryle Holloway and the Mount Vernon shooting, reinforcing that initial searches are the last, best chance to detect weapons.
Religious services and other programs can also create blind spots. The Robeson case makes clear that any environment where inmates move with less supervision increases opportunity for contraband transfer. At Smith State Prison, the weapon entered through a package thrown over the perimeter fence — a reminder that external actors can defeat even well-designed security systems. And in San Quentin, the firearm is believed to have been introduced during an attorney visit, though the exact method was never proven.
A few themes cut across all five cases. Optional security measures are dangerous; Mount Vernon showed how quickly “optional” becomes “ignored,” with predictable results. Transport continues to be one of the most vulnerable moments in custody, since officers’ attention is divided between movement, logistics and safety.
Intelligence is meaningless without action. At Smith State Prison, authorities had photographs of the gun and days to respond, yet failed to intervene. Smuggled firearms also threaten far more than the immediate facility. The Robeson case demonstrates how quickly violence can spill into the surrounding community.
Even the most restrictive units are not foolproof. San Quentin’s Adjustment Center was designed to prevent exactly this type of incident, yet it still occurred with devastating consequences. And throughout these cases, contraband cellphones played a dual role: enabling criminal activity while simultaneously revealing security failures.
The bottom line
Firearms smuggling into correctional facilities remains extraordinarily rare — but when it happens, the consequences are measured in lives. Every incident in this article, from body cavity concealment to year-long leadership failures, offers critical training value.
My fire camp raid on my last day found no gun despite good intel. Sometimes intelligence is wrong. Sometimes searches come up empty. But the Mount Vernon incident, where wand searches were optional, and Smith State Prison, where authorities knew for days and did nothing, represent failures of a different kind. These weren’t intelligence failures or search-technique failures. They were leadership failures and complacency failures.
As one corrections administrator said after a smuggling incident: “This could have ended so much differently.” That applies to every case in this article. The difference between “could have” and “did” often comes down to whether we treat security protocols as optional suggestions or mandatory safeguards.
Train like guns can appear anywhere, because history proves they can. And when they do, the consequences are measured in lives.
| WATCH: In the video below, Lexipol co-founder Gordon Graham discusses safety considerations during inmate transport:
