A rapist and murderer who had been on death row for almost 30 years has died after contracting coronavirus.
Richard Stitely died on Wednesday night at San Quentin State Prison, as he waited to be killed by the state.
The death came in the midst of a major coronavirus outbreak infecting over a third of its inmate population, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The 71-year-old was tested for the virus after his death and the Marin County Coroner’s Office on Monday confirmed his positive result.
The official cause of Stitely’s death is still being determined, the coroner’s office said.
As of late Thursday, 1,347 of San Quentin’s roughly 3,700 prisoners had tested positive for Covid-19, according to official data.
Around 114 prisoner officers have also tested positive for the virus, as of the latest figures released on Wednesday.
Stitely had been on death row since September 1992 for raping and killing Carol Unger, then dumping her body in a car park in North Hollywood, California in the USA in 1990.
He was found unresponsive in his cell with no signs of trauma.
He was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
There are currently 725 people on San Quentin’s death row.
In March 2019, governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions in California, and ordered the closure of the execution chamber as San Quentin.
