A Bay Area man was killed last week in a Central Valley prison where he was serving a life sentence for murdering a close friend, authorities said.
On Thursday, guards at Kern Valley State Prison found Jacob Kober unconscious and suffering from “serious injuries” in the cell he shared with Matthew Perez, authorities said in a statement.
Kober, 35, was pronounced dead half an hour later because he did not respond to medical treatment, authorities said.
Perez, 39, suspected of killing Kober, was taken to an outside hospital for treatment of his own injuries, authorities said. Both Kober and Perez had injuries that authorities described as “consistent with a prison-made weapon,” typically an improvised knife.
Perez was sent to prison in 2012 to serve 18 years for assault with a firearm and aggravated gang and weapons offenses. He has since been sentenced to serve another eight years for assault and two years for drug possession in prison, authorities said.
Authorities said an investigation into Kober's death is underway.
Kober had been serving an 80-year-to-life sentence for murdering a high school friend. According to an appellate decision that summarized testimony at his 2015 trial in Alameda County Superior Court, Kober suspected his friend, Kenneth Robert Ogden, of sleeping with his girlfriend.
Ogden, who previously dated Kober's girlfriend, also ran up a drug debt of several hundred dollars to Kober, according to the appellate decision.
On the night of Dec. 28, 2012, Ogden went to a home in Livermore where Kober was selling methamphetamine and marijuana. The home bordered a golf course. After Kober and Ogden entered the course, a neighbor recalled hearing three gunshots.
The next morning, a jogger spotted Ogden's body on the fairway of the fourth hole. He had been shot in the arm and chest, piercing his heart.
