By Cormac Dodd
The Santa Fe New Mexican
LOS LUNAS, N.M. — A prison inmate picking up trash found an unloaded 9mm pistol Monday morning along Interstate 25 near Los Lunas , state corrections officials said, marking the fourth firearm inmate work crews have found in New Mexico this year.
The discovery came just four days after members of another prison crew found a loaded 9mm handgun along Interstate 40 in Cibola County .
The New Mexico Corrections Department said in a news release issued Monday afternoon the most recent find came as inmates from the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas were on trash detail outside the city. The inmate alerted a supervising officer, who returned the crew to their vehicle. New Mexico State Police responded to the incident and took the firearm.
After the inmates arrived back the prison, the Corrections Department’s Security Threat Intelligence Unit searched and interviewed them, the news release said.
A work crew of four inmates from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants discovered a handgun with eight rounds in the magazine hanging from a barbed wire fence Thursday along Interstate 40 , the Corrections Department had reported earlier Monday. The Cibola County Sheriff’s Office and the Security Threat Intelligence Unit responded, and deputies seized the firearm.
“This is just incredibly rare and incredibly concerning,” said Brittany Roembach, a spokesperson for the Corrections Department .
When the inmates returned to the prison in Grants last week, they were searched and cleared, a news release said.
Nine inmates at a prison facility in Los Lunas stumbled upon two fully loaded 9 mm pistols underneath some tumbleweeds while picking up trash in late January on the side of Interstate 25 near the Santa Domingo Pueblo exit.
“In January, they found the two handguns, and now this,” Roembach said Monday. "... We’re glad our inmates were responsible and did the right thing in helping our staff to keep the situations under control.”
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