Extradition delayed, travel being coordinated for killing suspect

It could be another 30 days before a Trinidad man charged in a 1982 Carson City murder will be back on U.S. soil from the Caribbean, a federal official said Wednesday.

David Winfield Mitchell, 50, failed to appeal an extradition order signed by a Trinidad magistrate on Sept. 4. On Sept. 20, the attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago signed the extradition, said David West, head of the central authority unit at the Ministry of the Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago, in the West Indies.

The U.S. Marshal Service received confirmation of the extradition on Monday.

"It's ready to go; we just have to coordinate travel," said Chief Deputy Fidencio Rivera, U.S. Marshal spokesman for the District of Nevada. "If we have complications, it may be a month and a half."

Rivera said his office will not reveal when Mitchell is expected to return.

"For security reasons, we don't comment on movement of prisoners period, whether it be extraditions or regular movements in jails," he said.

Mitchell is charged with murder in the January 1982 killing of Sheila Josephine Harris, 19.

Harris' body was found in her Lompa Lane apartment by her mother and the complex manager. An autopsy revealed the former Miss Douglas County had been beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.

DNA testing of Harris' body and clothing came back in 2000 as being a match to Mitchell who was the maintenance man at the time of her killing. He was arrested in 1987, but released on lack of evidence.

According to West, Mitchell is being held in the maximum security prison in Trinidad to await extradition.

• Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.