LAS VEGAS -- A 42-year-old convicted bombmaker serving life in prison for a deadly 2007 explosion outside a Las Vegas Strip resort has escaped from a Nevada state prison, officials said Tuesday.
Officials realized Porfirio Duarte-Herrera was missing during a morning head count at Southern Desert Correctional Center near Las Vegas, and a state Department of Corrections statement said search teams were looking for him.
Duarte-Herrera, from Nicaragua, was convicted in 2010 of killing a hot dog stand vendor using a motion-activated bomb in a coffee cup atop a car parked at the Luxor hotel-casino.
Records show his co-defendant, Omar Rueda-Denvers, remained in custody Tuesday. The 47-year-old from Guatemala is serving a life sentence at a different Nevada prison for murder, attempted murder, explosives and other charges.
A Clark County District Court jury spared both men from the death penalty in the slaying of Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio, whom prosecutors identified as the boyfriend of Rueda-Denvers’ ex-girlfriend.
Prosecutors said jealousy was the motive for the attack on the top deck of a two-story parking structure. The blast initially raised fears of a terrorist attack on the Strip.
Officials described Duarte-Herrera as 5 feet, 4 inches tall and 135 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair.
