Jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was hospitalized here Wednesday after going into convulsions and becoming feverish at his Arizona prison, officials said.
Jeffs, 52, convicted as an accomplice to rape last year, was being treated for an undisclosed condition at the Sunrise Medical Center under police guard, officials said.
Neither a hospital spokesman nor the police would explain Jeffs' illness citing doctor-patient confidentiality.
But Mohave County police spokeswoman Trish Carter said his ailments "did not appear to be life-threatening" when he was admitted to a hospital in Kingman, Arizona, about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
A few hours after he was brought to that hospital, though, Jeffs was airlifted to Las Vegas.
"Yesterday morning, staff noticed that Warren Jeffs was in a lethargic state and upon closer observation, they saw he was in a weakened state of health," Carter said. "He had convulsive behavior, he was shaking and had a fever."
Jeffs is leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of Mormonism that supports polygamy.
He has been in jail in Kingman awaiting his next trial, this time on four counts of sexual misconduct with a minor related to accusations he arranged marriages of teenage girls to older men.
Jeffs was convicted in Utah last year on felony accomplice-to-rape charges and sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life.
Carter said Jeffs, who went on hunger strikes and attempted suicide while in a Utah jail awaiting trial there, was on a health watch and appeared to be eating normally.
He had a court hearing in Kingman scheduled for Friday that will likely be postponed. Jeffs has been segregated from the rest of the jail population and is confined 23 hours of the day, Carter said.
