Marysville rape suspect dies after jail beating

See Also: State jail standards rarely enforced

4-13-2014 Ohio:

A Marysville man accused of rape died on Friday from injuries suffered in an April 5 beating by other inmates at the Tri-County Regional Jail in Champaign County.

Authorities have released little information about the fight involving 39-year-old David Piersol on April 5, except to say that he was in the general population with more than a dozen other inmates, not in an isolated cell.

Piersol died at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where he had been in critical condition and on life support since the attack, officials said.

The jail, in Mechanicsburg in Champaign County, houses inmates from Champaign, Madison and Union counties. Piersol was in custody out of a Union County case.

Daughter: Inmate had more than 100 wounds

4-1-2014 Oklahoma:

A James Crabtree Correctional Center inmate died from more than 100 stab wounds, his daughter said she learned from the funeral home handling his cremation.

Sheryl Coleman viewed her father’s body on Wednesday, the same day an official from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed 61-year-old Timothy Dunivan died from multiple sharp force injuries.

“It was really bad. They tried to piece his face together, but they couldn’t so I only saw one side of him,” Coleman said. “There was only one stab in that one eye, underneath. It looked like they tried to cut his eyes out.”

Dunivan was found dead at the prison in Helena at about 8 a.m. Saturday.

The manner of Dunivan’s death is homicide, said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer with the state medical examiner’s office, said in response to an Open Records Act request seeking autopsy records.
An autopsy report is pending, Elliott said.

Coleman said family members counted approximately 20 stab wounds on Dunivan’s face and learned he had wounds to his hands, arms, shoulders and back.

“The right eye, right in the corner of (his) eye, right in the eyelid, you could see there was a huge stab there,” she said. “And then the chin and the forehead.”

Recently identified (via Home Address Checks) Fresno sex offender murdered

4-3-2014 California:

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Days after a Fresno man was identified as a sex offender, he turned up dead. Now, two people will stand trial for his murder.

Lawrence Ballesteros was stabbed to death in Sept. 2012, just days after a sex offender sweep. An autopsy showed Ballesteros was stabbed 58 times before his body was dumped near Chandler Airport.

Investigators believe the attack stems from the kind of anger you'd expect from a parent who just found out a pedophile had become a family friend.

When U.S. Marshals and local police went door-to-door tracking sex offenders, Lawrence Ballesteros was right where they expected him. The sting apparently blew his cover, though, and made him a target.

"There was a big uproar in this neighborhood," said defense attorney Gerald Schwab. "There were a lot of angry people confronting him about this report of him being a sex offender."

Less than a week later, a group of early morning walkers found him dead on a frontage road a mile from the detached garage where he was living.

Police arrested David Barrera and Patricia Perez for murder. Perez lived in the front house with her partner and their children. Investigators say she and Ballesteros were drinking buddies, and Barrera often joined them. They believe the shock of the revelation drove Barrera and Perez to kill their friend.

"That's exactly what they're saying is this is a case of vigilante justice -- my client killing somebody because he was a sex offender - however, there's no evidence to prove that," said Schwab, who represents Barrera. "There's no murder weapon. There are no eyewitnesses."

There is a Barrera fingerprint in Ballesteros' apartment, though. There's also video of his truck in the area where Ballesteros' body was dumped. Investigators found the victim's blood in that truck. But with no confession, prosecutors may have to dig deeper.

ABC30 legal analyst Tony Capozzi says a history of abuse could connect the suspects to this murder because of the brutality of the attack.

Sex offender's prison death investigated

4-1-2014 Tennessee:

State prison officials and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are looking into the death of a convicted child rapist at a facility that has struggled with inmate violence.

Jeffery T. Sills was found face down and unresponsive Friday morning at the South Central Correctional Facility in Wayne County, public information officer Greg Abrams said in a statement.

A correctional officer found Sills while unlocking cells for breakfast in the Columbia housing unit. Medical staff were called and tried to revive him.

Local paramedics took Sills to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, Abrams said.