Death Row Inmate Who Killed 2 Riverside County Deputies Dies
SAN QUENTIN (AP) — An inmate on California's death row for the 1997 killing of two Riverside County sheriff's deputies has died at San Quentin State Prison.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement Monday that 53-year-old Timothy Russell was found unresponsive in his cell late Friday night and declared dead at the prison early Saturday.
The statement says Russell had no cellmate and his death is being investigated as a suicide.
He was sentenced to death in January 1999, two years after the ambush killings of two Riverside County deputies, 41-year-old James Lehmann Jr. and 33-year-old Michael Haugen.
The deputies had responded to a domestic violence call in the remote desert area east of Cabazon where Russell lived when he opened fire on them with a rifle.
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