Parents of 20-Year-Old Slain in Cell Sue Youth Authority

It has been a year since Timoteo Silva was found beaten and mutilated in a California Youth Authority cell, but time has done nothing to ease his family’s sorrow.

His parents, Savas and Antonia Silva of North Hollywood, cry often at the thought of their son’s gruesome death, and at the mystery that still surrounds it.

How, they ask, could Silva, only the third youth murdered in the department’s nearly 60-year history, have been subjected to hours of torture without anyone noticing?

“Nobody saw and nobody heard anything. That’s why we’re so sad,” Antonia Silva said in Spanish. “No one did anything for him.”

The family, upset that guards did not prevent the death, last week filed a federal civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit, charging that the youth authority was negligent.

Timoteo, who was 20, died last March 15 while in his cell at the N.A. Chaderjian School in Stockton. His cellmate, Anthony DeSoto, now 19, was charged with murder and special circumstances of torture and sodomy and faces the death penalty if convicted.

Law enforcement authorities said there was no sign of gang warfare or any other rivalry leading to the killing. DeSoto and Silva were cellmates only about two days.

Officials with the San Joaquin district attorney’s office say evidence shows that DeSoto used clothing and bedding to restrain and gag Silva and cut him using a makeshift razor. The alleged torture, which included rape and other physical abuse, apparently lasted several hours, they said.

But Dorothy B. Klishevich, the prosecutor handling the case against DeSoto, said that while evidence against him is strong, none exists to indicate that guards should have prevented the death.

“Every time it was about time for a guard to come by, [DeSoto] would desist in whatever he was doing and it wouldn’t be apparent,” she said, adding that it was not as though “things were flying around the cell.”

Sarah Ludeman, a spokeswoman for the youth authority, declined to comment on the Silva’s lawsuit. She said the department requires staff to perform visual checks of inmates, essentially seeing hair and skin, every 30 minutes. That policy apparently was followed the day Silva died, she said.

“We are very much in the business of providing the safest environment,” Ludeman said. “We take it very, very seriously. Obviously, it’s a tragedy.”

The Silva’s lawyer, Steven Gourley, alleges that someone in addition to DeSoto is to blame.

Klishevich said the case against DeSoto, whose public defender was unavailable for comment, is set for trial in Stockton in September.