Telepeer

In Riverside County jails, a rash of homicide and negligence

April 23, 2025

By Christopher Damien

Christopher Damien reported about law enforcement in Southern California’s inland and desert communities as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.

As two cellmates were fighting in a Riverside County jail, an inexperienced guard remotely opened the cell door, a violation of safety protocols. One of the men immediately pulled out the other, hoisted him over his shoulder and threw him over a catwalk railing. He fell 15 feet before smashing into a metal table. It was his first day in the jail and his last day of life.

At another county jail, a detainee who had been mentally ill and charged with child sexual abuse should have been segregated for his own safety. Instead, he was placed in a bunk room with about 15 other men where he was strangled.

When a guard started a security check more than 90 minutes late at another county site, blood was pooling under a cell door and a detainee was wiping the walls. Inside, the officer found the man’s cellmate beaten, stabbed and without a pulse.

Killings are relatively rare in American jails, but those in Riverside County experienced a surge in them. They had the highest homicide rate among large jails in California from 2020 through 2023, according to state data. The murders and other deaths made the county’s five jails the second-deadliest in the nation during that period. In 2022, the jail system’s worst year, 19 detainees would die from homicides, suicides, overdoses and natural causes.

There were clear patterns of security lapses, negligence and policy violations that contributed to the six homicides in the county jails from 2020 through last year, The New York Times and The Desert Sun found. Similar issues were factors in the other deaths from this time period, previous reporting shows.

The Cois M. Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta, one of the jails that has given the system some of the highest death rates in the nation. (Alex Welsh for The New York Times)

An examination of the killings revealed that more than half the guards at one jail were performing security checks far less frequently than required, and often one to two hours late. They also failed to act during the fatal attacks or suspicious activity related to them caught on surveillance cameras, which are supposed to be constantly monitored.

In four homicides, detainees were assigned to cells that put them at greater risk, contrary to standard practices of separating detainees by race, sexual orientation and other factors, including a history of violent crimes, that could stoke conflict.

When deaths occurred, subsequent investigations were often flawed. Internal and public reports about the killings from the Sheriff’s Department established inaccurate timelines, omitted relevant facts and sometimes added false information, including a security check that never happened. Such reports had the effect of concealing from the public and detainees’ families consequential failures and decisions.

This article draws on more than 75 department reports, photos and videos of the deaths, internal documents detailing jail staffing and interviews with current and former employees.

The Riverside County sheriff, Chad Bianco, who took office in 2018 and was reelected four years later, implemented substantial staffing changes over that period, significantly reducing training requirements for guards. He declined to comment for this article or respond to questions. The union representing guards in the county jails also did not respond to requests for comment.

Bianco, a vocal Trump partisan, is now campaigning to win the Republican nomination for California governor. He has regularly bashed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and put blame for the jail deaths on the state’s left-leaning legislators.

But as the body count has risen, so has scrutiny of his department. The California Department of Justice has been conducting a civil rights investigation, and more than a dozen lawsuits making wrongful death claims have been filed against Riverside County, which has paid more than $13.3 million in settlements.

The morning after a detainee killing in September 2022 at the county jail in Murrieta, an administrator told sergeants to audit video to ensure that security checks were adhering to state law.

What was at stake, Lt. Aaron Martin wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times and The Desert Sun, was the threat of civil litigation.

“Due to the recent overdoses and deaths, it is important for you to understand how to properly conduct and document security checks to protect yourself and the Department from liability issues,” the email began. “Whenever these catastrophic situations occur, security checks are heavily scrutinized.”

Little training, big consequences

Hours before he was thrown from the Murrieta jail’s second floor, Mark Spratt, 24, had been charged with fraud after he was caught with stolen debit cards. He had several convictions for vehicle theft in neighboring San Bernardino County, but his crimes involved nothing like the violence he would fall victim to.

He was placed in a cell with Micky Payne, 35, who had three previous felony convictions, one for trying to take a gun from a police officer and two for domestic violence. In January 2023, he was awaiting sentencing for attacking a man with a broken bottle.

Payne was an admitted gang member and had recently fought with a cellmate, said Brynna Popka, a lawyer representing Spratt’s family. On the day Payne was sentenced to two years in state prison, Spratt was sent to share his cell.

From the start, there was trouble. Surveillance footage shows Payne blocked entry to the cell in a brief standoff. (The Sheriff’s Department has not publicly released the video.) Payne, who is Black, later complained on a phone call that a White man had been put in his cell, according to a department report.

Five current and former jail supervisors said that Payne’s altercation with his previous cellmate, along with the bottle attack, should have triggered a behavioral health assessment or the more restrictive custody often used for dangerous detainees. Along with the racial issues, the disparity in the men’s records — violent crimes versus small-scale fraud — should have led the jail to classify them differently and not pair them up, according to the veteran employees. (They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.)

The facilities in Riverside County had the highest homicide rate among large jails in California from 2020 through 2023, according to state data. (Alex Welsh for The New York Times)

At the time, there was upheaval in the Riverside jails.

The department had long required deputies to start their careers in the jail system. But many objected. Sheriff Bianco promised to do away with jail assignments during his campaign in 2018. In 2022, as the nation began to emerge from the pandemic, he was eager to deliver.

He increased the number of jail staff and leadership positions that would be filled by correctional deputies. They are paid significantly less than deputy sheriffs, can start at age 18 instead of 21 and complete training in less than three months rather than six.

That change drained critical experience and training from the jails, according to the five veteran employees. The surge in violence and detainee deaths that followed, they said, was a consequence.

Internal emails obtained by The New York Times and The Desert Sun included spreadsheets tracking the shifts in jail staffing. The number of sworn deputies dropped from about 180 in March 2022 to 65 by the following November. The first of the 19 deaths came in April that year.

Michael Lujan, who had retired as a sheriff’s captain before he challenged Bianco in the 2022 election, said it was invaluable to have experienced jail workers at all levels who know how to effectively communicate with people in custody, and to make sound decisions when situations become volatile.

“I’m not casting blame on the hardworking young people in these difficult assignments,” Lujan said in an interview. “It was a managerial error to move veteran workers out of the jails and create an experience deficiency that builds on itself.”

While the county jails had, on average, a killing every two years during the last two decades, three homicides occurred at the Murrieta jail over just four months.

Mark Spratt, 24, was killed by his cellmate, who had a history of violent crime. (Courtesy photo)

Spratt’s was one of them. In Cell 43, he appeared to be asleep when deputies did a security check just after midnight on Jan. 12, 2023. But about 1:30 a.m., neighboring detainees alerted deputies that a fight had broken out inside.

Correctional Deputy Nicolas Sevilla, who had finished training just six months earlier, did not intervene, however. When told of the conflict, he didn’t leave his post in the central control room — about 50 feet away — but turned on the lights and told the two men over the intercom to stop fighting, according to a department report.

Minutes later, he remotely unlocked and opened the door to the cell, the report said.

That was highly unusual. Several of the former supervisors said it was typical practice for deputies to alert other guards, go outside the cell where a fight was occurring, try to de-escalate verbally, then use pepper spray or another deterrent. Opening the door, they added, created a chaotic, dangerous situation.

Spratt was on the floor of the cell. Payne then dragged him, exited the cell and threw him over the nearby handrail, according to the report and video images from the subsequent criminal case.

Doctors at a nearby medical center found that Spratt had sustained facial fractures, a broken leg and spine and a torn aorta. He underwent emergency surgery but did not survive.

In later commenting on the death, Bianco falsely claimed that Spratt had a history of violent crime and that the two detainees had gotten along as cellmates for three months. The jail system, in reporting the death to the California Department of Justice, wrote that Spratt was Black, while the autopsy report — and his own family — said he was White.

Fatal errors

The placement of detainees contributed to other killings at the Riverside County jails. It’s standard at jails around the country to house detainees according to demographics, gang affiliations, records of violence and any medical and behavioral health issues. While strict segregation isn’t always necessary or possible, these factors typically are carefully considered.

“If you are following your training and guidelines, you should be able to effectively reduce the risk of this kind of violence,” Lujan, the former captain, said of the homicides. “Think of the thousands of people who have cycled through the jails in years past without a problem here and in other counties.”

Scott Lowder, 55, for example, had previous convictions for violent crimes and had been incarcerated since May 2024 for threatening to kill a gas station attendant with a knife. Two current and former jail employees said that Lowder was incorrectly classified when he was booked. Despite his record, he was permitted access to tools in the print shop at the jail in Banning during a vocational program for low-risk defendants. On Sept. 7 last year, while a teacher was present without any guards, he stabbed Steve Deleon Gonzalez, 36, another detainee, with a screwdriver. The victim later died from the wound.

Rosendo Echevarria, 29, was held at the same jail after returning from treatment to improve his mental competency so he could stand trial. His mental health issues and the crimes he was accused of — child sexual assaults — made him a target in a barrack-like unit with about 15 other detainees.

On Sept. 8, 2020, three days after his arrival, three of them strangled him while others played cards and chess nearby, video images show. One man convicted in the killing later told a reporter that deputies had told some of the detainees to check out the charges against Echevarria.

A moment from the attack on Rosendo Echevarria, top right, while others played cards and chess nearby. (Riverside County Sheriff's Department) — A moment from the attack on Rosendo Echevarria, top right, while others played cards and chess nearby. (Riverside County Sheriff’s Department)

At the Murrieta jail, Kaushal Niroula, 41, was awaiting retrial on homicide charges in the 2008 killing, with five others, of an art collector in Palm Springs whom they had intended to defraud. Niroula, who had been transitioning to female while in custody and had H.I.V., should have been considered for segregation for her own safety, according to jail policies.

Instead, she was housed with Rodney Sanchez, 63, a man accused of several violent child sexual assaults. After six months sharing a cell, he strangled her on Sept. 6, 2022.

He later pleaded guilty and told detectives he had been annoyed by Niroula’s talk of possible release after an upcoming trial. At that point, he had been jailed more than six years.

Violence can break out at any point when people are incarcerated, but long stays in jails and prisons can be associated with more conflict and attacks. The Riverside County jails tend to hold people longer than those in most other California counties.

Sheriff Bianco and District Attorney Mike Hestrin both tout their tough-on-crime stances. Many suspects are kept in jail for long periods awaiting trial because the prosecutors’ office offers plea bargains far less often than its counterparts in the state. That leads to packing the jails and backlogs in the courts.

Riverside County’s share of the jail population awaiting resolution of a felony case rose from 59% to 86% between 2015 and 2024, data shows. That is one of the highest rates in the state.

In the jail killings, some victims and their attackers had been held for long periods. Niroula had been incarcerated for nearly 12 years, with a stint in state prison. Echevarria had been in custody for seven years. The three men accused of strangling him had collectively spent more than seven years in jail before the attack.

A lack of accountability

When a detainee is killed, the Sheriff’s Department initiates a series of inquiries that are essential to criminal prosecutions and internal assessments.

But reports of those investigations in Riverside County are often marked by errors and omissions, The New York Times and The Desert Sun found. In some cases, the reports appeared to cover up serious security lapses.

The flaws were particularly striking in reports about the death of Ulysses Munoz Ayala, 39, held on an assault charge, at the Murrieta jail on Sept. 29, 2022.

Just three weeks after Niroula’s killing there, Correctional Deputy Mario Correa saw a detainee inside his cell smeared with blood. He was focused on cleaning the walls while his cellmate lay face down under a white sheet, blood flowing under the door.

“Is he breathing?” the guard asked the man, Erik Martinez, now 33, who stopped abruptly and shrugged.

Munoz Ayala, the cellmate, was unresponsive. Emergency workers declared him dead about 20 minutes later.

Ulysses Munoz Ayala was stabbed to death by his cellmate, Erik Martinez, who told investigators that the men had argued about a rap song. (Riverside County Sheriff's Department) — Ulysses Munoz Ayala was stabbed to death by his cellmate, Erik Martinez, who told investigators that the men had argued about a rap song. (Riverside County Sheriff’s Department)

An autopsy found he had a skull fracture and seven puncture wounds to the neck. He and his cellmate had both been drinking alcohol, reports show. Martinez later admitted to the killing and told investigators that the men had argued about a rap song. He had been arrested about a year earlier after an unprovoked attack on a man outside a laundromat, killing him by repeated stabs to the neck.

Within days of the jail murder, two detectives from the department wrote reports for the criminal case. They referred to video footage, saying the two men entered their cell at 2:36 p.m. and it remained locked until 4:21 p.m., when Deputy Correa, the guard, did a security check. An internal investigator for the jail claimed that Munoz Ayala was “last seen alive” at 2:36 p.m., and a coroner deputy added that a routine security check was performed at 2:48 p.m., which no other report asserts.

But the timeline wasn’t true. Footage obtained by The New York Times and The Desert Sun shows that the two men moved freely outside their second-tier cell up until 3 p.m. that day, almost a half-hour later than claimed, and interacted with others from the first tier who had been let out to use the common room.

It is not known if those interactions contributed to the death or the cellmates’ acquisition of alcohol, but allowing detainees from multiple tiers out at the same time is a security violation. Deputies assigned to monitor surveillance video should have noticed the men moving throughout the cell block and called for intervention, the current and former employees said.

One of the detectives on the criminal case discovered the inaccuracies about 10 months later. He had asked the jail’s internal investigator for the footage while preparing for a court hearing, but was given video missing a crucial 20-minute portion. He obtained the complete video from someone else and wrote a revised timeline.

The video showed that after the two men returned to their cell, another detainee noticed a confrontation inside. After looking in the cell window at 3:49 p.m., the detainee alerted others in the common room, making a stabbing motion to his neck. Men from the lower tier gathered nearby, and several appear to have communicated with Martinez as he was wiping down the cell. All of that would have been considered suspicious activity, but deputies — some of whom are assigned to monitor security cameras — apparently didn’t notice and didn’t intervene until Deputy Correa’s security check more than 30 minutes later.

The Sheriff’s Department did not appear to take issue with these lapses and discrepancies. Instead, another internal investigator focused on the deputy’s late security checks in a report about seven months after the killing.

The investigator told Deputy Correa that he had been 97 minutes late for the security check when he discovered the body, which the deputy eventually conceded. During an interview, the guard said he had been trained to start a security check an hour after the previous one had been completed, even if he was running behind. Jail policy requires 12 security checks in a 12-hour shift, however, and a log for the day of the killing shows that Correa and his partner did only 10. Of those, seven started more than an hour after the prior one had ended.

The report found that, like Correa, many newer staff members — nearly 100 at the Murrieta jail — had been incorrectly trained, performing checks one to two hours late. Ultimately, investigators attributed the lapses to the jail’s software system and cleared Correa.

Munoz Ayala was the last of seven deaths at that jail in 2022. Correa was on shift during three of them, including one overdose and one apparent suicide. State law requires hourly security checks in case there is need for emergency medical treatment. Civil cases filed by the survivors of those seven detainees assert that a late security check was a contributing factor.

Nearly three years after Munoz Ayala’s murder, his former cellmate pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.

But the Sheriff’s Department is still reporting to the California Department of Justice that Munoz Ayala’s death is under investigation and his cause of death pending. Accurately reporting that he was murdered would further raise the county jails’ homicide rate.

Justin Mayo contributed reporting. Julie Tate contributed research.

Christopher Damien is a reporter focusing on law enforcement and incarceration in California as part of the Local Investigations Fellowship at The Times.

In Riverside County jails, a rash of homicide and negligence Orange County Register

News Details

In Riverside County jails, a rash of homicide and negligence

Little training, big consequences

Fatal errors

A lack of accountability

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

News

CONTACT INFO

QUICK LINKS

SERVICES

CURRENT NEWS