State medical experts say treatments made teen competent to stand trial

State medical experts have concluded a 19-year-old accused of two slayings is competent to stand trial when properly medicated.

Two months after Carl Guilford was sent for evaluation to the state’s mental health facility in Sparks, he has returned to Clark County to face two counts of murder. He is accused of suffocating his 6-year-old cousin and of beating and stabbing to death his jail cellmate.

Guilford was rendered competent through treatment, said his lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Norm Reed.

Reed said the defendant is being held in his own cell at the Clark County Detention Center, where he is receiving the appropriate medical treatment.

Guilford was arrested May 26 after being accused of suffocating his cousin with a comforter.

According to his arrest report, Guilford was trying to quiet the boy so he wouldn’t wake the boy’s mother at their Desert Inn Road apartment. Guilford told police he heard the devil’s voice tell him “well done” as he left the room.

Guilford’s mother told investigators her son is bipolar and talked openly with family members about angels and demons and had mentioned “making sacrifices.”

Las Vegas police determined through a classification system that Guilford should be segregated from the general population but could be housed with Francesco Sanfilippo, 29, who was facing child pornography and drunken driving charges.

On July 29, a corrections officer found the inmates’ cell bloodied during a routine check. Guilford was sitting on the top bunk.

According to a police report detailing Sanfilippo’s slaying, Guilford initially told homicide detectives that a fight between the two ensued after Sanfilippo grabbed Guilford’s buttocks and said, “I’m going to take that.”

Guilford said he didn’t remember what happened next, but police said Guilford beat Sanfilippo in the head and stabbed him with a pencil.

The suspect then changed his story “and said that the devil told him that he needed to kill Sanfilippo, or he would make him kill himself.”

Sanfilippo’s sister, Susanne Zeigler, has filed a $10 million federal civil rights lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department. The lawsuit alleges Sanfilippo was not housed safely.

Zeigler has alleged through her attorney, Brent Bryson, that Guilford was refusing his medication at the time he was housed with Sanfilippo.

Contact reporter Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.