COLOMBIA, SC – South Carolina prison officials made a major bust last week, collecting weapons, cell phones, wine and even a pipe, officials said.
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Smuggling was seized at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, WIS-TV reported.
Prison officials said they had recovered 34 shins, 10 cell phones, three bags of homemade wine and a pipe made of chicken bone, WACH said. Eight lighters and two boxes of Pop-Tart filled with prescription drugs were also confiscated, according to WIS.
“Our intelligence unit obtained some information about some contraband and some other problems in this dorm on Broad River,” Bryan Stirling, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, told WACH.
Stirling added that on Tuesday, prison officials discovered four paws and 19.5 gallons homemade wine in a dorm at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville.
There were 252 inmates in the Broad River dormitory, where smuggling was found last week, WACH said. Stirling said his department is aware of people trying to use creative ways to smuggle objects into prison.
“We have people trying to take things down using drones,” said Stirling. “We have people who try to send things by mail.”
Stirling said last week’s search lasted an entire day, adding that if prison officials had conducted another round of searches, they probably would have found more illegal items.
“This is not uncommon,” Stirling told WACH. “When we search an entire prison, we find a lot more and that is to search common areas, kitchen, bedrooms, living areas.
“We don’t stop until we find the source.”