Authorities report that a Bay Area man, serving a life sentence for the murder of a close friend, died last week in a Central Valley jail.
Guards at Kern Valley State Prison discovered Jacob Kober motionless and suffering from “serious injuries” on Thursday in the cell he shared with Matthew Perez, according to police.
Authorities declared Kober, 35, dead 30 minutes later after he did not respond to medical treatment.
Investigators accused Perez, 39, of killing Kober and brought him to an outside hospital to treat his own wounds. Both Kober and Perez suffered injuries that officials described as “consistent with an incarcerated-manufactured weapon”—usually a homemade knife.
In 2012, authorities sentenced Perez to 18 years in prison for assault with a firearm, along with gang and gun enhancement charges. According to officials, he has subsequently been sentenced to an additional eight years in jail for assault and two years for narcotic possession.
Authorities claimed that an inquiry into Kober’s death is still ongoing.
Kober was serving an 80-year-to-life sentence for the murder of a high school acquaintance. According to an appellate judgment that recounted testimony from Kober’s 2015 trial in Alameda County Superior Court, he accused his friend, Kenneth Robert Ogden, of sleeping with his girlfriend.
According to the appellate judgment, Ogden, who previously dated Kober’s girlfriend, owed him several hundred dollars in drug debt.
On the night of December 28, 2012, Ogden went to a Livermore house where Kober was selling methamphetamine and marijuana. The house backed up to a golf course. After Kober and Ogden entered the course, a neighbor reported hearing three pops.
The next morning, a jogger discovered Ogden’s body on the fourth-hole fairway. Someone had shot him in the arm and chest, piercing his heart.
