ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 19, 1996 TAG: 9610210046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: POWHATAN
State police officers with dogs trained to sniff out explosives and weapons searched a maximum-security prison Friday after an anonymous inmate warned the warden that a prisoner had obtained a handgun.
The Powhatan Correctional Center was placed under a round-the-clock lockdown after a note from an inmate surfaced on Thursday, state Corrections Department spokesman David Botkins said.
About half of the prison had been searched by late Friday afternoon and no weapon had been found, Botkins said. The prison's nearly 600 inmates will remain restricted to their cells with visitation sharply limited while the detailed cell-to-cell search continues through the weekend, Botkins said.
``This sort of thing is not terribly uncommon. We get anonymous notes of one kind or another a lot, but we take this kind of thing very seriously,'' Botkins said.
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Short : 28 linesby CNB