2 PRISON DEATHS, DRUG DEALING MAY BE LINKED

LAS CRUCES - Two state prison inmates found dead in their cells Monday
morning were victims of a power struggle over the prison's drug trade,
prison officials said.

Preliminary results of an autopsy by the Office of the Medical Investigator
determined the two victims were strangled to death in their cells at the
Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility several miles west of Las Cruces.

The victims were identified as Rolando Garza, 23, and Frank Castillo, 32,
both of Albuquerque. They were found in their bunks shortly after 9 a.m.
Monday while other inmates were at breakfast.

The roughly 800-inmate prison, with separate minimum and medium-security
wings, remained under lockdown Tuesday as State Police and the Corrections
Department continued their investigations.

Investigators have learned the killings occurred while inmates were
released from their cells into the housing unit and guards were busy moving
inmates to their morning activities, said Corrections Department spokesman
Gerges Scott.

Investigators believe several people were involved in each of the killings,
and that some type of garrote was used.

The killings were the worst incidence of prison violence in New Mexico
since an August 1999 riot at a private prison near Santa Rosa, when a guard
was killed.

Garza and Castillo were among gang-affiliated inmates kept separate from
nongang inmates in their own individual cells at the southern New Mexico
prison, Scott said.

Garza began serving an eight-year sentence on Feb. 16, 2000, for a
voluntary manslaughter charge stemming from a 1999 slaying in Albuquerque.

Garza, also known as "Looney," was charged in the early morning May 12,
1999 slaying of 19-year-old Robert Almaraz, a Sandia High School graduate,
outside a gas station on Coors SW while the victim talked to friends.

Castillo began serving a five-year sentence in February 1999 for robbery
and violating terms of his probation.

Castillo had served a one-year sentence in prison after pleading guilty in
November 1998 to a robbery charge stemming from a June 1998 incident in
Dona Ana County, in which he snatched a purse from a woman who was holding
her baby.

Castillo was released from prison in August 1999 but was arrested two
months later for violating terms of his probation when he failed to enter a
drug-rehabilitation program and report to his probation officer, court
records show. Castillo was previously convicted of armed robbery in 1987
and two counts of aggravated battery in 1990.