Two inmates have been slain over the last three weeks inside a cellblock at the Lancaster state prison, renewing concerns about overcrowding at the institution.
The latest victim was found Tuesday morning, stuffed under the bottom bunk of his cell and wrapped in a bedsheet, said prison spokesman Ken Lewis. Richard Ponton, 36, also reportedly had a pillow over his face and a cardboard box shielding his body.
"There was a significant amount of blood on the floor," Lewis said. "He apparently bled to death."
The killing came two weeks after another inmate was found wrapped in a bloody sheet in his cell.
That victim, Robert Painter, 59, had been beaten to death and died from multiple injuries to his head, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said.
Painter's cellmate is being blamed for his death. Ponton's death remains under investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, though his cellmate is a suspect, authorities say.
Both deaths occurred within one cellblock in a unit segregated from the general prison population for inmates who need extra security.
Officials acknowledged that having two prisoners killed in the same cellblock within the same month was unusual. But they said it was too early to know whether changes were needed there.
"We don't know all the details yet," said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "But any time there's a homicide in one of our prisons, it's always a cause for concern and investigation."
Some prisoner-rights advocates say the incidents highlight the danger of having two potentially violent prisoners in one cell. So-called double-celling is one of the ways that Lancaster and other facilities in California's prison system have been dealing with the growing inmate population.
"The deaths are due to overcrowding," said Cayenne Bird, whose son was once incarcerated at Lancaster and who heads a support group for prisoners' families. "The guards have a campaign going on that it's too few officers, but what it is really is there's too many inmates. They're carelessly double-celling the mentally ill with regular inmates."
Officials at the Lancaster prison have no immediate plans to change their screening process for placing two inmates in one cell. The prison houses about 4,500 minimum-, high-medium and maximum-custody inmates but was designed to hold fewer than half that number when it opened in 1993 as the only state prison in Los Angeles County.
