INMATE SUSPECT IN KILLING CELLMATE WRAPPED IN SHEET, FATALLY WOUNDED.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - A state prison inmate is suspected of killing another inmate who was a convicted child molester and arsonist in the cell they shared, a prison spokesman said Thursday.

Robert Painter, 59, who was serving a 25-year sentence for setting fire to a state lawmaker's Riverside office in anger because he had to register as a sex offender, was found mortally injured early Monday in his cell in a so-called ``sensitive needs'' section of California State Prison-Los Angeles County.

``As officers were doing a security check, they noticed an inmate .... who was lying on the cell floor in a pool of blood,'' California State Prison-Los Angeles County spokesman Lt. Ken Lewis said.

When the officers spotted Painter on the cell floor, he was wrapped in a bedsheet, Lewis said. The officers unwrapped him, checked his pulse and called for prison medical personnel.

Found injured about 2 a.m. Monday, Painter was pronounced dead about two hours later by the prison's chief medical officer, Lewis said.

Los Angeles County coroner's officials declined to disclose the cause of death because by Thursday they had still not located Painter's family to tell them of his death. Prison officials disclosed his name.

Cellmate Michael Andrews, 41, who is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence as a ``three strikes, you're out'' repeat offender, was the only other person in the cell, Lewis said. Lewis said Thursday he can't comment on whether Andrews admitted killing his cellmate or said why he had done it.

Andrews was removed from his cell and taken to an administrative-segregation prison area. He has not been charged with a crime, though Lewis said the investigation is continuing by both state prison investigators and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide detectives.

Lewis said he didn't know why either man was in the ``sensitive needs'' area, but he said the area holds inmates who aren't safe in the general prison population, for reasons that include the crimes they committed or because they dropped out of a gang.

Painter had been convicted in 1976 in Riverside County of child molesting and served almost two years in prison.

In 2003, he was convicted of setting a June 2001 fire at the Riverside office of then-state Sen. Ray Haynes, using an auto tire doused with Coleman stove fuel. He was also convicted of starting a May 2002 fire that destroyed the trailer he rented, four vehicles and a boat.

Painter was burned starting the 2002 fire. He left his cell phone outside the senator's office after starting the 2001 fire, hoping to get caught, but investigators had not talked to him before the 2002 fire, an arson investigator testified in a 2002 hearing.

Painter said he set fire to Haynes' office because it was the only state senator's office in Riverside and he blamed the state's sex-registrant law with ruining his life, the arson investigator testified.

Painter said he set the 2002 fire because he was upset with his treatment by his landlord's family, the investigator testified.

Andrews went to state prison in 1990 for burglary, in 1992 for robbery and in 1997 for being an ex-convict with a gun, all for Orange County convictions, state prison records show. The 1997 sentence was for 25 years to life as his ``third strike.''

Andrews had been at the Lancaster prison since 2001. Painter had been there since 2003.