Authorities are investigating a California inmate in the death of his cellmate, a convicted child molestator, whose body was found Friday at the Lava Creek State Jail.
Amador County Jail officials discovered that Robert E. Cole was not responding to his cells around 6:30 a.m., according to a statement from the California Department of Correctional Corrections and Rehabilitation. They tried to revive him, but he was declared dead a few minutes later.
Cole, 48, was sent to Mule Creek in Placer County. He served life sentence without parole for multiple violent sexual offences, including having sex with children under the age of 10, or oral mating with children under the age of 14, and oral mating with unconscious victims.
Cole’s cellmate Justin P. Wales was placed in a restricted home while authorities from the prison and Amador County District Attorney’s Office investigated the alleged murder. The Amador County Coroner’s Office will determine Cole’s official cause of death.
Sex offenders, especially those convicted of crimes against children, are common targets of prison violence. A 2015 analysis by the Associated Press found that male sex offenders make up about 15% of California’s prison population, but about 30% of murder victims in prison.
Wales, 36, was sent to Lava Creek from San Bernardino County after being sentenced to 18 years in prison for assaulting a firearm and physical injury. According to a CDCR source, he faced a stronger sentence with domestic violence and severe physical injuries that he was previously convicted of a serious felony charge.
Mule Creek State Prison opened in 1987 and lives in the home of over 3,800 prisoners. It was in the same prison that David Brinson, a convicted murderer who serves life in prison for four LA area murders during a couple’s visit in November, killed his wife, during a couple’s visit.
Cole’s death would be the latest in a violent death in a California prison if determined to be murder.
A reporter was killed Sunday on suspicion of an attack at the Monterey County Jail, according to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.
Last month, 39-year-old inmate Joshua L. Peppers was fatally injured after allegedly attacked by fellow inmates at Lancaster prison, authorities said. Also, in March, 32-year-old inmate Jake Kennedy died of multiple stab wounds at the Sacramento prison.
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