Riverside County Murderer On Death Row Dies From Coronavirus

SAN QUENTIN, CA — A death-row inmate who was convicted in Riverside County of first-degree murder has died from apparent coronavirus complications.

David John Reed, 60, had been on California’s death row since 2011 and was imprisoned at San Quentin State Prison where a COVID-19 outbreak is ongoing.

Reed died Tuesday at an outside hospital, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. An exact cause of death has not yet been determined, although the CDCR reported Reed died "from what appear to be complications related to COVID-19."

Reed was sentenced to death in October 2011 for the murder of Ricky Mosley in a racially motivated attack near a Palm Springs restaurant. Reed was white and Mosley black.

Mosley's body was found March 9, 2004, near Billy Reed's restaurant in the 1800 block of North Palm Canyon Drive. He had been stabbed to death.

In a recorded interview, Reed told police detectives he had staked out the area for about two weeks for a man he believed had sexually assaulted his estranged wife.

During the murder trial, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Ross showed jurors a photo of Mosley's stab wound and played the interview of Reed discussing the killing and using a racial epithet to describe the 34-year-old victim.

Ross said Reed waited for two weeks for Mosley to come around the restaurant and then stabbed him through the heart. He broke off the knife handle and hid it and the blade near his mother's apartment building, the prosecutor said.

About two months later, Reed picked up a woman who was hitchhiking after a fight with her boyfriend, Ross said. Reed drove the woman to his home and pulled out a handgun when they arrived, accidentally shooting himself, he said.

Reed was taken into custody at the hospital, and when taken to jail, asked to speak to a Palm Springs detective for whom he described Mosley's killing.

He claimed his wife gave him a description of her alleged attacker and took him to where she said she was assaulted. Reed led detectives to the place he hid the knife and handle and described how he stabbed Mosley, who was unarmed, Ross said.

In the same interview, Reed told investigators he doesn't like black people, according to Ross, who showed jurors photos of Reed's tattoos, one of which read "white pride" and another that said "Peckerwood," a term Ross said was associated with white supremacy.

Reed's attorney said his client's wife told her husband that Mosley had "brutally" sexually assaulted her near Toucans Tiki Lounge in Palm Springs.

The judge noted at sentencing that no suspects were identified or evidence found to prove the alleged sexual assault ever occurred, and Reed's wife did not testify at the trial.

According to prosecutors, Reed was also suspected in two other killings but never charged.

In addition to a death sentence, Reed was also sentenced to 25 years to life for a robbery he committed a month after the murder.

San Quentin State Prison currently has 1,304 active COVID-19 cases among inmates — 721 of those cases came within the last 14 days, according to CDCR data. Six inmates at the facility have died from COVID-19 complications, the data show.

The outbreak has raised questions about the handling of the virus in the state's prison population, and on Monday, the correctional system's top medical officer was fired.

Earlier Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted a decision to transfer more than 100 inmates in May from California Institution for Men in Chino, where hundreds of coronavirus cases have been confirmed and 17 inmates have died due to complications from the illness.

—City News Service contributed to this report.