TECUMSEH, Neb. (AP) - The cellmate of a man fatally attacked last week at a troubled Nebraska prison has been charged in the case, state prosecutors said Friday.
The Nebraska attorney general’s office said in a news release that Patrick Schroeder, 39, has been charged with first-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon in the death of 22-year-old Terry Berry.
Investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol say Berry and Schroeder were the only occupants of the cell at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution where Berry was found unresponsive April 15. He was taken to a Lincoln hospital, where he was declared brain dead Monday and taken off life support Thursday.
An autopsy found that Berry had been strangled.
Schroeder is serving a life sentence for the 2006 killing of 75-year-old Pawnee City farmer Kenneth Albers, whose body was found at the bottom of a well. Berry was serving a three- to four-year sentence for felony forgery and a jail assault conviction from Platte County. He was up for a parole next month and set for release in December.
The prison in southeastern Nebraska has a history of deadly violence, including an inmate uprising last month in which two inmates were killed and others were injured after a fire started in a courtyard. That incident came less than two years after a May 2015 riot in which inmates took control of two housing units, killed two prisoners and caused more than $2 million in damage.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska and its national partners are promising to sue the state if Gov. Pete Ricketts doesn’t allocate additional money to fill current prison staff vacancies and address overcrowding.
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