An Anaheim man being held in a Banning jail for alleged burglary was arrested last week for murdering a 69-year-old fellow inmate.
Salvador Vega, 51, is accused of slaying Thousand Palms resident Robert Anthony Hearn, who was found fatally injured at 3:09 p.m. Tuesday in his Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility cell, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.
No details about a motive or how Hearn was killed were released, just that Vega was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder. He was originally charged with burglary, a sentencing enhancement for alleged vandalism and violation of a court order to prevent domestic violence for a March 5 incident in Murrieta.
]
Before the slaying, Vega had been scheduled to attend a Friday hearing to determine whether his case would be plea bargained, the Orange County Register reports.
Hearn was arrested Feb. 28 in Thousand Palms on three misdemeanors–abusing an elderly or dependent adult, battery and brandishing a weapon–and had a March 30 hearing scheduled on whether he belonged in a mental health facility.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.