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GREENSBORO - Deputies found a homemade knife Monday in the cell of Sidney Lowe II, the son of the N.C. State men's basketball coach, Sheriff BJ Barnes said Wednesday.

The knife, made from metal and a plastic spoon, was found during a routine, random search of cells at the Guilford County jail, Barnes said .

No one was injured, he said.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, Lowe's attorneys said their client had been threatened by other inmates and called a snitch.

"Sid was scared out of his mind and used some scraps of plastic and metal, which he found in his cell, to try to make something with which to defend himself in case of an attack," Locke Clifford and Joe Cheshire said in the statement. "He did not try to hide it from the jailers. We are sure that he will soon earn Sheriff Barnes' confidence and will be sent to the county farm to finish serving his sentence."

But Barnes said he has no immediate plans to move Lowe, whom Barnes put in an isolated cell at the jail after his sentencing last week.

A judge sentenced Lowe, 23 , to 15 months at the Guilford County Prison Farm for his role in a March 16, 2007, home invasion and a March 24, 2007, shooting at a UNCG dorm room .

The farm is a minimum-security facility in Gibsonville that houses 50 to 60 inmates during the week and up to 100 on weekends, Barnes said. The inmates live in dorm rooms and can move about the 800-acre farm with minimum supervision.

By comparison, jail inmates live eight to a cell, Barnes said; the cells are built to house four. There also are single-person cells that can be used when necessary, as in the case with Lowe, he said.

A typical offender sent to the prison farm has failed to pay child support or committed a DWI, he said.

"I don't put felons or folks who commit other violent crimes at the farm," Barnes said. "I can't put somebody out there who had a propensity toward violence."

Barnes said he explained his concerns to Superior Court Judge Henry Frye Jr. , who sentenced Lowe to the farm. The sheriff has the authority to assign inmates where he sees fit.

Barnes said he separated Lowe when he arrived at the jail because of "his notoriety."

Lowe's sentencing last week - and the appearance and testimony of his father, Wolfpack coach Sidney Lowe - drew a number of reporters and others curious about the case.

Frye gave Lowe a more lenient sentence than offenders in most similar cases. Lowe's defense attorneys argued that extraordinary mitigation allowed the judge to go below the state's minimum sentence for the charges.

Frye warned Lowe that if he got into trouble, he had 11 years of a suspended sentence hanging over his head.

The incident at the jail falls under a disciplinary action report, Barnes said. If Lowe had used the homemade knife, he could have faced criminal charges, Barnes said.

If he gets another disciplinary report, Barnes said, "we'll have to take a good, hard look at how he's treated and where he's placed."

Barnes was not sure how long he would keep Lowe separated at the jail.

Whether Lowe will make it to the prison farm, as Frye had ordered, remains to be seen.

"I can't put somebody out there, for example, that they're going to have to be leery of or that may cause a problem for the community," Barnes said.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com