PITCHESS DEATH PROBE CONTINUES.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS Staff Writer

CASTAIC -- Sheriff's homicide investigators continue to probe the death of an inmate who collapsed in a dorm he shared with other gang members.

Investigators suspect that inmate Alex Valdez, 43, was punched or kicked in the abdomen before dropping to the floor of his dorm at the Pitchess Detention Center, said Capt. Ray Peavy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide unit.

Valdez is the first homicide victim at the Castaic jail complex since an inmate was killed in a February race-related riot.

After Valdez collapsed Dec. 4 and died in a local hospital, the Sheriff's Department sent six detectives to interview the 63 inmates who shared his dorm.

``The investigation is ongoing,'' Peavy said. ``We are making some progress and I believe we'll be able to identify the suspects, but ... we have not gotten to that point yet.''

Valdez was a gang member and was housed in dorm 728, reserved for a jail gang known as the Southsiders, sheriff's officials said. The dorm is in the North County Correctional Facility, a maximum-security jail at the Pitchess complex.

``This was primarily a Hispanic gang member dorm,'' said Capt. Greg Johnson, who is in charge of NCCF. ``In all those dorms, there are some other races if they align themselves with the Hispanic gang members.''

But the inmates were classified as medium-security risks, not the high-security level reserved for the most violent offenders, Johnson said.

Like other dorms at NCCF, the dorm where Valdez was killed was supervised by a sheriff's deputy sitting at a circular desk and facing several large dorms arranged in a semicircle.

The deputy was alerted that something was wrong when other inmates in Valdez's dorm shouted ``man down,'' Peavy said. Responding deputies found Valdez walking unsteadily, then he collapsed.

Valdez was in jail after his August arrest by Los Angeles police for a parole violation. He spent years in prison on several robbery convictions, according to records from the California Department of Corrections.

alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com

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