Deandre Austin: California pedo rapist serving life term killed in jail allegedly by cellmate
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA: A pedophile, serving a life sentence at a prison in California, died on Wednesday, October 14, after being attacked in his jail cell, according to officials. Deandre Austin was found unresponsive at Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) in Ione, southeast of Sacramento on Wednesday evening. Austin had been given a life term for rape, sodomy, continued abuse of a child under 14, and a host of other sex offenses.
It is believed that an alert was sounded for "man down" in the prison and although medics rushed to Austin's cell, he was pronounced dead an hour later. Officials at the prison have now announced that they have launched an investigation into Austin's death as a homicide. They have also reportedly placed the 46-year-old's cellmate, identified as Rodney Jordan, in a segregated housing pending the results of an investigation.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), in a statement, said: "On Wednesday at 5.40 pm, correctional officers responding to a call of 'man down,' discovered an unresponsive Austin in his cell. Staff immediately called 911 and started life-saving measures. An MCSP doctor pronounced Austin deceased at 6.30 pm."
The department added that they had received Austin from Contra Costa County on October 2, 2008, and he had been serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole rape, lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under age 14, continuous sex abuse of a child under 14, penetration with a foreign object with a victim under 14, oral copulation and sodomy. The officials from the department said that the prison's movement has been altered in an effort to aid the investigation and the Amador County District Attorney's Office is assisting investigators from MCSP.
Austin's prison mate, who is being considered a suspect, was received from Los Angeles County on August 14, 2017. He had been serving a two-year prison term for first-degree burglary. Although he had been paroled on July 31, 2018, he returned from parole on September 4 of that year for a new conviction and was sentenced to five years for second-degree robbery.
Prison attacks on child sex offenders are not uncommon across the world. In a similar instance in the UK, a man on Thursday, October 15, who was serving a 40-year prison sentence for abducting and killing an 8-year-old girl, nearly died after he was repeatedly stabbed by two of his fellow inmates. The man, identified as Roy Whiting, was attacked by two men at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire and was stabbed with screws and a plank of wood with a screw as they screamed: "You f***ing nonce." Nonce is a slang word meaning "child sex offender." Similarly, in January this year, a convicted child molester, David Bobb, at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran, succumbed to his injuries after being attacked at the prison he was stationed in. He was serving a life term for an aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14 years old.