Murder Count Filed Against Inmate in Jail Knifing Death

A 22-year-old man was charged with murder Thursday in the stabbing death last weekend of an Orange County Jail inmate who had been in custody for more than three years awaiting trial on murder charges himself.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Melvin L. Jensen said Aaron Viorio Martinez was charged with stabbing Lloyd R. Green, 27, last Sunday. Green, of Chino, died at 6:30 p.m. at UCI Medical Center in Orange, two hours after a jail deputy reportedly saw Green and Martinez fighting.

Martinez had been in jail for two months, facing charges of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Green had been there since January, 1985. He and a co-defendant were awaiting trial on murder charges in the shooting death of Yong C. Sou, a Garden Grove doughnut shop owner, during an attempted robbery in August, 1984.

Jensen, who will prosecute the case, said the stabbing occurred in an area of the jail called administrative segregation, which is usually reserved for inmates known to have caused problems behind bars.

Martinez, of Santa Ana, is scheduled to be arraigned on the murder charge today in Central Municipal Court in Santa Ana.

Jensen said Martinez had been on probation for an earlier robbery conviction when he was arrested in May. He allegedly tried to steal a stereo from an Orange Coast College student and stabbed his victim in the hand.

Thomas Goethals, a deputy district attorney, said Green had been stabbed with “a jail-made weapon” and that “there were other inmates present.” He declined to elaborate on what happened.

Goethals said Green and Martinez were housed on the same tier of a 12-cell block of the administrative segregation area. Although inmates are kept in individual cells in that area, they sometimes gather in common areas.

Martinez was housed there because there had been “security problems” with him, Goethals said. And Green had been known as “a troublemaker at the jail,” according to one of his attorneys, Charles Margines.

Twice marijuana had been found on Green. During the second search, jail deputies said, they also found an 11-inch knife, fashioned from a piece of mirror frame, buried in Green’s mattress.

Green, according to a jail source, had been known to strongly identify with a Latino gang in the jail. But investigators declined to speculate whether the confrontation between Martinez and Green had been racially motivated.

Goethals added that it did not appear that Green and Martinez had scuffled before. “But, obviously, that is something that we are looking at very closely,” he said.

Green and his co-defendant in the pending murder trial, Ronald S. Rodriquez, were also implicated in a series of robberies. Green, who had served an earlier prison term for burglary, was facing 31 felony counts at the time of his death. Green and Rodriquez faced special circumstances in their trial, meaning a death penalty was possible upon conviction.