The Minnesota Department of Corrections has identified the victim of a suspected homicide in Lino Lakes prison last week as 63-year-old Steve Paul Patchen.
Corrections Department identifies victim of suspected homicide in Lino Lakes prison
Steve Paul Patchen, 63, was found unresponsive on Oct. 5. Authorities have placed a suspect into segregation pending an investigation.
October 10, 2023 at 7:33PM
Patchen, who was serving a nearly 20-year sentence for sexually assaulting multiple teenage girls, was found unresponsive in his cell at 10:30 p.m. Oct. 5. Medical personnel pronounced Patchen dead later that night after failing to resuscitate him, said spokesman Andy Skoogman.
Skoogman identified the suspect, who is being held in segregation during the investigation, as a 42-year-old serving a life sentence for a murder conviction. The Star Tribune does not name suspects unless they have been charged.
The corrections department's Office of Special Investigations is leading a probe into the death with help from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Lino Lakes Police.
The killing, which sent the Lino Lakes facility into lockdown, marks the first suspected homicide in a Minnesota prison since 2021, when 56-year-old James Francis Howard was beaten to death in his Rush City prison cell. Before that case, the previous homicide of an inmate took place in the Oak Park Heights correctional facility in 2014.
In 2018, correctional officer Joseph Gomm, 45, was killed in the Stillwater correctional facility by inmate Edward Muhammad Johnson, who was serving a nearly 29-year sentence for second-degree murder. Johnson, who attacked Gomm with a hammer, pled guilty to first-degree murder for killing Gomm and is now serving a life sentence.
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