A Bay Area man was killed last week at a Central Valley prison where he had been serving a life sentence for murdering a close friend, officials said.
On Thursday, guards at Kern Valley State Prison found Jacob Kober unresponsive and suffering from “serious injuries” in the cell he shared with Matthew Perez, authorities said in a statement.
Kober, 35, was pronounced dead a half hour later after he did not respond to medical treatment, authorities said.
Perez, 39, who is suspected of killing Kober, was taken to an outside hospital to be treated for his own wounds, officials said. Both Kober and Perez had injuries that authorities called “consistent with an incarcerated-made weapon” — usually a makeshift knife.
Perez was sent to prison in 2012 to serve 18 years for assault with a firearm and gang and weapons paraphernalia charges. He has since been sentenced to an additional eight years for assault and two years for drug possession in prison, officials said.
An investigation into Kober’s death is ongoing, the authorities say.
Kober had been serving a sentence of 80 years to life for murdering a high school friend. According to an appellate decision summarizing testimony at his 2015 trial in Alameda County Superior Court, Kober suspected that his friend, Kenneth Robert Ogden, was sleeping with his girlfriend.
Ogden, who previously dated Kober’s girlfriend, also ran up a drug debt of several hundred dollars to Kober, according to the appeal decision.
On the night of December 28, 2012, Ogden went to a house in Livermore where Kober was selling methamphetamine and marijuana. The home borders a golf course. After Kober and Ogden entered the court, a neighbor recalled hearing three pops.
The next morning, a jogger saw Ogden’s body on the fairway of the fourth hole. He had been shot in the arm and through the chest, piercing his heart.