The authorities are investigating a California inmate in the death of his cellmate, a convict child abuser, whose body was found in the state prison of Mule Creek on Friday.
The officers of the Amador County prison found Robert E. Cole without responding in their cell around 6:30 am, according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. They tried to resurrect him, but was declared dead minutes later.
Cole, 48, was sent to Mule Creek since the pleasure county. I was fulfilling life imprisonment without probation for multiple violent sexual crimes, even having sex with a child under 10 years of age, an oral intercourse with a child under 14 years and oral intercourse with an unconscious victim, according to CDCR officials.
Cole's cellmate, Justin P. Welsh, has been placed in restricted homes, while the prison authorities and the Amorder County Prosecutor's Office investigate the alleged homicide. The Amador County Forensic Office will determine the official cause of Cole's death.
Sex criminals, especially those convicted of crimes against children, are common objectives of prison violence. According to an analysis of 2015 conducted by Associated Press, male sexual criminals represented about 15% of California's prison population, but represented about 30% of victims of homicides in prison.
Welsh, 36, was sent to Mule Creek from San Bernardino County after being sentenced to 18 years for assault with a firearm and inflict bodily injuries, both crimes of second strike. He faced sentence improvements for inflicting large bodily injuries that involve domestic violence and being previously convicted of a serious crime, according to CDCR officials.
Mule Creek's state prison opened in 1987 and houses more than 3,800 inmates. It is the same prison where David Brinson, a convict murdere that meets a life imprisonment for four murders in the area, killed his wife during a conjugal visit in November, according to the Office of the Sheriff of Amador County.
Cole's death, if it is determined that it is a homicide, would be the last in a series of violent deaths in California prisons.
An imprisoned man died on Sunday after an alleged assault in a Monterey County prison, according to the Monterey County Sheriff's office.
Last month, inmate Joshua L. Peppers, 39, was fatally injured after being attacked by a prisoner in a prison in Lancaster, authorities said. Also in March, the inmate Jake Kennedy, 32, died of multiple white weapon wounds in a sacrament prison.
