A convicted murderer out of Harris County has been charged with a count of capital murder in connection with the January 2024 strangling death of his cell mate at the Montford Unit near Lubbock.
San Diego Delgado, 42, who is being held at the Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony where he is a serving a 40-year prison sentence for murder in the 1999 killing of a 93-year-old woman, was indicted in June by a Lubbock County grand jury in the Jan. 5, 2024 strangling death of 36-year-old Ta’varis Jones at the Montford Unit, a medical facility for Texas inmates.
Capital murder typically carries a punishment of life in prison without parole or the death penalty.
A custodial death report states that Jones died from strangulation by another detainee.
A TDCJ official told the A-J in 2024 that staff members found Jones dead in his cell with injuries consistent with a physical assault.
Life-saving measures were taken, however Jones was pronounced dead.
Jones had been serving a 15-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in July 2013 to five counts of assault family violence in the 159th District Court in Angelina County.
The case against Delgado is set in the 137th District Court in Lubbock and will be prosecuted by the Special Prosecution Unit, an independent agency that assists district and county attorneys with prosecuting crimes arising out of state prisons.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice records show that Delgado was sentenced in 2019 to 40 years in prison for murder in the September 1999 killing of Novell McKissack in her Houston home.
However, in 2022, he was sentenced to four more years in prison after he was convicted on a charge of possession of a deadly weapon in a penal institute. A year later, he was handed two, five-year prison sentences for convictions for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a public servant and possession of a deadly weapon in a penal institute.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Convicted murderer charged in cellmates’ strangling death at Montford Unit in Lubbock
Reporting by Gabriel Monte, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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