The 35-year-old man stomped to death by inmates at Men's Central Jail last month while guards left them alone in a locked room was a mentally troubled person in custody for a nonviolent offense, authorities acknowledged Friday.
Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said Chadwick Shane Cochran had originally been in downtown L.A.'s Twin Towers mental health facility. For unknown reasons, he was eventually moved into the general population at Men's Central -- across the street -- with accused murderers, known gang members and other violent inmates. Sheriff's Department officials are now investigating why.
"He was a fish out of water," Sheriff Lee Baca said Friday. "These inmates were sharks, and he was in the shark tank."
The death was the eighth in the county jail system in two years.
Cochran was a transient who suffered from paranoia and delusions, friends said. He landed in jail following a series of events that began in October when 79-year-old Gloria Mae Rowe of Covina befriended him after finding him in the rain outside a supermarket near her home.
She invited Cochran to live in the trailer behind her house. She said she enjoyed his company, even when he loudly used barrels as a drum set and talked about his dreams of becoming a rock star. He appreciated the clothes and steak dinners and called her "Mom," she said.
From the beginning, he seemed agitated and worried about people trying to get him, she recalled. On the evening of Oct. 23, seeking to calm him, Rowe lent Cochran a loaded black steel revolver he could keep near him to feel safe -- a weapon that she had owned "30 or 35 years," she said. "It's been a long time."
The next day, sheriff's deputies found out that Cochran had the gun -- something he was not allowed because of a criminal conviction in a robbery 14 years ago. A deputy arrested him. According to court records and interviews, he had not used the weapon or threatened anyone with it. In fact, by the time deputies arrived, he had apparently given the gun back to Rowe.
Cochran was initially housed at Twin Towers and treated as a patient suffering from a possible mental illness, said Michael Gennaco, head of the sheriff's Office of Independent Review. Departmental practice is to segregate inmates who may have mental problems from the rest of the jail population. At some point, Gennaco said, Cochran was shifted into a single cell at Men's Central. Then deputies moved him into the general population.
