A "racially motivated" fight involving close to 30 inmates at the state-run Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility in Clayton resulted in the stabbing death of a prisoner Sept. 2.

New Mexico State Police allege in a statement of probable cause video surveillance footage and witness statements implicate Max Aragon, 32, "as the individual who stabbed" 48-year-old Anibal Ortiz during the deadly melee.

Aragon, who has been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the slaying, has been in the custody of the state Department of Corrections since August 2014 on a 19-year sentence for armed robbery with a deadly weapon, residential burglary and fleeing a peace officer.

Ortiz, an inmate from Hawaii being held in New Mexico through an interstate compact, was stabbed twice, once in

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