VENTURA COUNTY NEWS : Murder Defendant Alvarez Arrested : Crime: Man charged in the killing of Oak View teen Kali Manley is accused of striking a fellow inmate. Prosecutors are considering whether to file charges.

Adding to his legal troubles, murder defendant David Alvarez has been arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for allegedly punching a fellow jail inmate.

Authorities say the incident occurred Saturday afternoon at Ventura County’s main jail in Ventura, where Alvarez is being held without bail on charges he strangled and attempted to rape a 14-year-old Oak View girl last December.

“While he was being moved from one cell to another, he ran and attacked another inmate worker,” Cmdr. Mark Ball of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said.

Alvarez, a 23-year-old Ojai resident, punched the inmate, Ball said. A deputy intervened and separated the two men, and Alvarez was immediately arrested on suspicion of battery.

The 35-year-old victim, who was serving meals to inmates at the time of the incident, sustained minor injuries. Ball said there does not appear to be any relationship between the two men.

“It appears to be an unprovoked attack,” Ball said.

Alvarez, who was scheduled to be arraigned on a single count of battery Wednesday afternoon in Ventura County Superior Court, appeared for a video arraignment from jail with his attorney. But charges had not yet been filed, and the matter was postponed.

Alvarez’s attorney in the murder case, James M. Farley, said he was unaware of any details involving the incident. He said he has not had a chance to talk with his client and has not seen a criminal complaint.

Ball said the matter has been referred for prosecution to the state attorney general’s office, which charged Alvarez with murder in March after local prosecutors declared a conflict of interest because Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury is a friend of the defendant’s parents.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said Wednesday that prosecutors had just learned about the incident and have not decided whether to file charges.

Alvarez has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted rape, and a trial is set for Oct. 18.

Prosecutors allege that Alvarez strangled Kali Manley, a Nordhoff High School freshman, while trying to force her to have sex with him in the early morning of Dec. 20.

The girl’s bruised and naked body was found a week later in a drainpipe in the mountains above Ojai. She had been strangled.

Manley left a girlfriend’s house about midnight Dec. 19 and drove with Alvarez and a friend, Robert Miears, to a convenience store in Miramonte, according to testimony at Alvarez’s preliminary hearing.

Witnesses said Manley did not know the men, who had stopped by her girlfriend’s house that night.

At the convenience store, Miears bought a four-pack of wine coolers and the three drove to a trailer owned by Alvarez’s family. Manley and Alvarez began drinking the wine coolers and later went into a bedroom together, according to authorities who interviewed Miears.

When Miears awoke the next morning, he said, Alvarez and the girl were gone.

Alvarez was later arrested on suspicion of making terrorist threats to an Ojai Valley woman and her son at the same convenience store. While in jail in that case, Alvarez agreed to lead authorities to Manley’s body, ending an extensive community search for the girl.