SAN QUENTIN (KRON) – Aswad Pops, a San Quentin inmate on death row, was found dead Thursday night, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
While results of the autopsy are still pending, officials are treating it as a suicide.
Pops, who was 48 and incarcerated in a single cell, was sentenced to death on April 7, 2000 for murdering four people during a Corona car wash robbery.
Since 1978, when California reinstate capital punishment, 82 condemned inmates have died from natural causes, 27 have committed suicide and 13 have been executed in California. There are currently 731 offenders on California’s death row.