By Trevor Schakohl
A Texas man pleaded guilty Wednesday to flying a drug and electronics-carrying drone into federal prison, adding to a “trend” that increasingly vexes corrections authorities, the Northern District of Texas U.S. Attorneys’ office announced.
Bryant LeRay Henderson confessed to piloting a DJI Inspire drone bearing methamphetamine, THC, cellphones and other contraband into the FMC Fort Worth prison’s airspace, but it crashed into a prison yard, an office press release said. After prison workers recovered the craft, investigators found the flight log indicated it had trespassed into the facility’s airspace several other times and twice gone into the airspace of another Texas federal prison, FCI Seagoville.
“Contraband drone deliveries are quickly becoming the bane of prison officials’ existence,” U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham said, according to the release. “Illicit goods pose a threat to guards and inmates alike – and when it comes to cell phones, the threat often extends outside prison walls. We are determined to stop this trend in its tracks.”
People in New Jersey and Georgia have been convicted in the past year and a half of drone-related smuggling crimes at prisons, and a different Texas man was charged earlier this year for allegedly flying a drone above a third federal prison in the state, FCI Beaumont, the release reported.
In 2019, a camera at Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Jail caught an inmate receiving a drone-dropped package that the sheriff’s office claimed held marijuana and a cellphone, according to CNN.
A north Texas Justice Department press officer did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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