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A fight broke out at a prison in the US after a large stash of drugs and tobacco was dropped into the recreation yard by a drone.
According to local media, a fight broke out involving nine inmates after a drone dropped a package containing several hundred grams of marijuana, heroin and tobacco into the open exercise yard at the Mansfield Correction Institution in Ohio. Surveillance footage showed a drone passing overhead just before the fight broke out, which prison guards eventually broke up by using pepper spray.
The inmates were all moved to solitary confinement, and the full package of drugs dropped was also retrieved.
State spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said that this was only the latest attempt to deliver contraband via drone, and that the state would begin to take extra precautions against this new method of delivery. In March, a drone carrying drugs as well as mobile phones crashed into the fence at a maximum security prison in South Carolina.
And in the same month, Bedford prison became the first in the UK to be targeted in this way, though this attempt was also unsuccessful after it was “quickly intercepted by vigilant staff”.
Drones remain a contentious subject, with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) having introduced guidelines on when and where drones can be flown – though the law itself is still fluid on the matter. Near misses have been reported by passenger planes at two UK airports, and some have called for geo-fencing to be introduced to cut off a drone’s power supply when it enters restricted airspace.
