Two county jail inmates sentenced in attack

Two Clark County Jail inmates accused of assaulting another inmate and taking items he purchased at the commissary were sentenced Wednesday in Clark County Superior Court.

Alejandro Mendoza, 24, pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery, and in a separate case, possession of a weapon by a jail inmate. He was sentenced to 13 months.

Charges against the co-defendant, Arthur Martinez, 46, were dismissed as part of a plea deal, in which he pleaded guilty in another case to attempted first-degree assault. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The prosecution said Martinez had attempted to buy methamphetamine from a man. When the man refused, a fist fight broke out and Martinez pulled out a box cutter knife and sliced the man’s jaw.

According to a probable cause affidavit, inmate Chris McNicholas had been talking on the telephone Feb. 2 and returned to his cell to find $30 of items he’d purchased from the jail commissary missing. Another inmate identified Mendoza and Martinez as the thieves.

At about 8:45 a.m. the next day, Mendoza and Martinez entered McNicholas’ cell and began punching him in the head and splashed cleaning solution on his face, the affidavit said. The assault was apparently provoked by McNicholas telling other inmates that the men were “jail thieves,” court records show.