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Drugs were another contributory cause. Said local TV Reporter Ernie Mills, who was in the first group of journalists swapped for guards: "Some of those in mates were so high that they could al most have flown out of that prison." Racial tensions, however, appear not to have been an important factor. About 60% of the inmates were Hispanics, 30% were white, and 10% were black. But most of the victims were also Hispanics.
Because of the unprecedented savagery, some experts concluded that a kind of madness was a cause of the carnage. Said Pedro David, a University of New Mexico sociologist who studied the prison in the early 1970s: "There were people in the prison who were very disturbed mentally and belonged in a hospital." Indeed, prison officials reported that the riot was caused by a hard-core group of about 50 inmates, who through intimidation enlisted about 150 more active participants.
Said Chief Medical Examiner James Weston: "Virtually every one of the bodies had overkill, which is to say that there was more than mob hysteria. There was rage." Added Dr. Marc Orner, the psychologist at the prison: "None of us really understands what happened in there.
The depth of the violence is incomprehensible to me as a human being and as a psychologist. It is as if all the aggression a human being can have was savagely unleashed. We just can't understand why they did this to each other."