Prison inmate at High Desert dies

INDIAN SPRINGS — An inmate at the High Desert State Prison in southern Nevada has become the sixth Nevada prisoner to die in less than two months.

Prison officials say 67-year-old Truman Walker was found dead in his cell at the Indian Springs facility on Friday.

They gave no indication of his cause of death but say an autopsy will be performed by the Clark County Coroner’s Office.

Walker was incarcerated in 1985 after being convicted of sexual assault with substantial bodily harm in Elko County and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

After he was paroled in 1999, he was incarcerated again in 2000 after pleading guilty to a charge of open and gross lewdness.

The string of inmate deaths began Sept. 20 when 34-year-old Ruben Martinez Arroyo hanged himself in his solo cell at the same prison in Indian Springs.

Four inmates died in October at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City. Foul play has been ruled out in all the deaths there expect for one.

Nevada Department of Corrections officials have declined to discuss the circumstances of any of the deaths.

Officials from the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada have said the cluster of deaths and lack of information raise questions of inmate care.