A man died in his cell at a San Diego prison and CDCR is investigating it as a homicide

Hector Ozuna, 66, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego on Saturday and pronounced dead at 6:57 a.m., 10News reported, citing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The death is being investigated as a homicide.

What that does and does not mean

It means investigators have reason to treat the death as caused by another person rather than by natural causes, an accident or suicide. It is a working classification that determines how the investigation proceeds.

It is not a finding. The San Diego County Coroner has not determined a cause of death, and no one has been charged.

The cellmate

Ozuna shared the cell with Alexis Guerrero, 30, who has been moved to restricted housing.

We are naming him because CDCR released his name and because two outlets have published it, but the qualification matters more than the name. Moving a cellmate to restricted housing during an investigation into a death in that cell is standard procedure. It is not an accusation, it is not a charge, and it does not establish that he did anything.

Guerrero is serving a six-year sentence, 10News reported.

About Ozuna

He had been at Donovan since arriving from Riverside County, and was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for assault with a deadly weapon, with an enhancement, as a third-strike case.

That belongs in the story, but low in it, and with an observation attached. What a person was convicted of is not context for how they died. A homicide in a state facility is a failure of the state's obligation to keep the people it holds alive, and that obligation does not scale with the sentence.

What happens next

The coroner will determine cause and manner of death. CDCR runs its own investigation into deaths in custody, and cases where a crime is suspected are typically referred to local prosecutors, though the reporting we could verify does not say whether that has happened here.

None of that produces a public answer quickly. Deaths in California prisons are investigated largely out of view, and the first thing the public usually learns after an announcement like this one is whether charges follow, sometimes months later.

We could not verify a CDCR statement beyond the facts attributed to the department in the reporting above, and we found no comment from the coroner.