Drone drops drugs in Ohio prison yard, spurring inmate fight

Officials say a drone has dropped a package of drugs into an Ohio prison yard while inmates were outside, sparking a fight.

According to the Mansfield News Journal, the drone flew over the Mansfield Correctional Institution on July 27 and dropped the package, which contained 144.5 grams of tobacco, 65.4 grams of marijuana, and 6.6 grams of heroin.

“Our agency’s top security administrators are taking a broad approach to increase awareness and detection of unmanned aerial systems”, Smith told the Columbus Dispatch. The officers then used pepper spray to control the fight and ordered all inmates to get on the ground.

The prison investigation showed that nine inmates were involved in the fight, all were strip searched, run through a cell sensor and checked by the prison clinic before being put in solitary confinement.

It wasn’t until officials saw video footage of the drone dropping off the package into the north recreation yard that they realized what was going on, according to The Huffington Post.

There were many inmates in both the prison yards at the Mansfield Correctional Institution when that drone came over, as 75 inmates were in the north yard and another 130 were in the south yard. The inmates complied and remained on the ground as other staff responded.

Authorities are now investigating whom the package was intended for – and who was piloting the drone.

Drones can’t usually fly in software-controlled flight plans because they lose their Global Positioning System.