Nevada prison killings: Family of slain inmate hunts for answers

On Aug. 6, LeConna Cobbs got a call that no mother ever wants to receive.

“My sister told me she got a call from somebody at High Desert State Prison saying that my son got stabbed,” Cobbs said.

Cobbs’ son, D’marea Wallace, 18, was serving a sentence of three to eight years after he was convicted of robbery. According to a Metropolitan Police Department arrest report, he used a fake handgun to rob two Las Vegas massage spa businesses when he was 16 in 2023.

Since Wallace’s arrest, Cobbs married and moved to San Diego to be with her husband, a pastor named Lonnie Boswell. She said she was excited about showing Wallace her new home when he got out of prison.

Instead, Cobbs found out after calling the prison that Wallace had been killed.

“I asked for them to do a wellness check on my son, but I was told that the system was down and that they couldn’t do that,” Cobbs said. “They said I had to call back later and then hung up on me. I had my husband call back and he was begging them to check. We got a call back 30 minutes later and they told me D’marea was deceased.”

A deadly summer

Prison can be a dangerous place, but this summer has been an especially deadly period for inmates at High Desert, a maximum security facility in Indian Springs about 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

For the one-month period from July 16 through Aug. 17, five inmates under the age of 40 have died at High Desert. Three of those deaths were being investigated as suspected homicides, according to an Aug. 12 press release from the Nevada Department of Corrections. The death of an inmate at Southern Desert Correctional Center, which neighbors High Desert, was also being investigated as a suspected homicide, the department said in the release.

The three High Desert deaths that were being investigated as suspected homicides included Wallace, as well as Jacob Herman, 35, who died at the prison on July 16, and Jordan Canteberry, 34, who died ten days after Herman. Wallace died from multiple stab wounds, according to the Clark County coroner’s office, as did Canteberry. Herman, whose cause of death had not been made public as of Friday, was several days away from being released.

Ronnie Owens, 32, also died at High Desert on Aug. 8, according to the department. And on Thursday, the department announced the Aug. 17 death of 39-year-old Jared Beebe at High Desert. The causes of death for Beebe and Owens had not been released as of Friday.

The Southern Desert death that was being investigated as a suspected homicide was the Aug. 11 death of Ryan Warren-Hunt, the department said. Warren-Hunt, 35, died from “multiple sharp force injuries,” according to the Clark County coroner’s office.

The news release also said department officials “suspect drug debt is an exacerbating factor” in the homicides, and that the “deaths were in different housing units and appear unrelated.” The department also said surveillance and “staff operations” were increased to “reduce the number of offenders outside their cells at one time.”

James Dzurenda, director of the department, said in the release that “outside experts” were being consulted to help determine ways to “curtail the influx of contraband and illegal substances” that come into the prison system in Nevada.

He said a “variety of committees are being formed” to address the issues, according to the release.

A spokeswoman for the department denied a request from the Las Vegas Review-Journal for an interview with Dzurenda, but on Friday, the deputy director for the department, Bill Quenga, said there’s a particular concern about synthetic drugs, often made from common household cleaning agents, being smuggled into facilities.

“To get these drugs into correctional facilities, criminals spray or brush paper with these synthetic drugs and then mail them into the facilities, where it is very difficult to detect,” Quenga said. “The drugs are then sold throughout the population. If the recipient does not deliver on payment, it places the offender’s life in danger.

On Friday, the department announced the arrest of a 30-year-old Las Vegas man for allegedly introducing synthetic drugs into prisons in Nevada and California.

One of the three felony charges Hoza Del Collins is facing is second-degree murder. A department press release announcing the arrest didn’t say whose death the arrest was made in connection with.

Advocate questions department’s statement

Jodi Hocking, founder of a nonprofit called Return Strong, which advocates for prisoners in Nevada, said she thinks there’s more to the story than just drug debt disputes at High Desert.

“I definitely think there’s a problem, but I don’t think you can point to one thing,” Hocking said. “Saying that this is all related to drug debt, that’s ignoring the big picture. I think what’s happened recently is beyond excessive.”

Hocking said close to 3,000 incarcerated people in Nevada are in semi-regular contact with Return Strong. She said he’s been concerned with conditions inside Nevada prisons for a long time.

“When people on the inside saw these deaths were being blamed on drug debts, my phone was blowing up,” Hocking said. “They’re saying what it is is frustrations boiling over from heat and isolation and boredom and how all of those things contributes as layers to a problem.”

Cobbs’ sister, Roshonna Cobbs, said she knows people inside High Desert and she and Boswell are convinced that Wallace’s cell door was “popped” open. They’ve been told, LeConna Cobbs said, by eyewitnesses that a group of inmates dragged Wallace out of his cell before he was assaulted.

In his written response to questions, Quenga said “there is currently a design flaw” with facility doors, but that a “capital improvement project has already been approved to quickly resolve the issue this fiscal biennium.”

LeConna Cobbs said her son was a student at Shadow Ridge High School in the north Las Vegas Valley in 2023 when his troubles started.

“He was a great kid, he had a great heart,” LeConna Cobbs said. “Back then, his grandma had died, and D’marea lost his way for a while. It spiraled for him, but he still had a great future in front of him. He was eager to get out of prison so he could start helping young people. He only had about a year left on his sentence.”

LeConna Cobbs said she didn’t even know Wallace had been transferred to High Desert before learning of his death. Wallace had been incarcerated at Carlin Conservation Camp, a minimum security facility in Elko County.

Hocking said she believes it’s a bad idea to put teenagers in the same cell blocks as older hardened criminals.

“D’marea ended up, really, with a death sentence over something that he did when his brain wasn’t even developed enough,” Hocking said. “I think a lot of people feel a different way about a case like D’Marea, but if it were to be their loved one, they’d feel differently.”

Lawsuit after 2023 death at Southern Desert

In June, the mother of the children of a Southern Desert inmate, Patrick Odale, who was killed in 2023, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in District Court against the department of corrections and the Clark County coroner’s office.

After an investigation, the coroner’s office found that he died by “positional and mechanical asphyxia in the setting of law enforcement restraint,” meaning that he had been placed in a position that prevented him from breathing properly.

At the time of his death, Odale had served less than two years of a one-to-four-year sentence for possession of a stolen credit card and attempt to carry a concealed explosive, gun or weapon. His death was ruled a homicide.

‘There’s nothing for the inmates in these facilities’

Across the state, Hocking said, prisons are short-staffed, crowded, and in some cases, lack basic infrastructure.

Earlier this year, it was reported that the department faced a budget shortfall of over $50 million.

In 2024, according to a state audit, corrections officers clocked more than 38,000 hours of unknown overtime that cost the state $2.1 million, the Review-Journal previously reported.

The finding was part of an audit report conducted by the Division of Internal Audits in the governor’s finance office released July 29 and presented during an executive branch audit committee meeting.

A lack of funding contributes to the issues, Hocking said, but more money won’t fix everything.

“You fix it by addressing the root of the problem, which is harm reduction and healing and having programs and hope,” Hocking said. “In Nevada, we take everything away from a person and expect them to rehabilitate and heal. There’s nothing for the inmates in these facilities.”

A future lost

Lonnie Boswell, Wallace’s stepfather, said the family is exploring a possible lawsuit in the wake of his death, but he said that won’t take the pain of Wallace’s absence away.

While incarcerated before coming to High Desert, Wallace earned his high school diploma through a program at Northern Nevada Correctional Center. Boswell described Wallace as a young man who was looking forward to his future.

“All his teachers said he was respectful and smart,” Boswell said. “He was always talking about running a barber business and he wanted to help the homeless through our nonprofit in San Diego. He was doing great (in northern Nevada), so we have no idea why they put him in this crazy high-level prison.”

Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.