RICHMOND – Registered architect Shawn Harding offered professional, alarming observations on the state of the Ray County Jail – none of them complimentary. Harding described fundamental, lifethreatening flaws. “By code, I couldn’t house anybody in there right now,” Harding, the business development director for HMN Architects, Overland Park, Kansas, said. “Wood framing is flammable. You’ve got people housed in there that aren’t free to exit. It’s a death trap. I had an old sheriff one time call (a similar jail) a wood-fired pizza oven. … “Institutional occupancy requires sprinklers.” The cells also represent a safety concern, Harding said, guessing people lacking jail construction experience created the bars. “It looked like they found angle iron and some steel rods and welded them up,” Harding said July 23. “I saw the same metal fasteners that you use on the outside of a metal building holding the panels on the inside of the metal building. I’m shocked that nobody has removed…