(CN) --- California prison officials are facing a federal wrongful death lawsuit filed Friday by the family of an inmate who was allegedly stabbed to death last year in prison by another inmate who claims to be a 2,000-year-old vampire who drinks blood.
Prison officials found the body of Aaron Coderre in the showers at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton on May 31, 2020. The facility houses inmates who require extensive medical or mental health care.
Coderre was found with multiple stab wounds to the neck. Authorities said another inmate, Joshua Rudiger, had been in the showers at the same time as Coderre. He was later charged with Coderre’s murder.
Rudiger was convicted in 1999 for murdering a homeless woman by slashing her neck and drinking her blood, as well as attacking three other San Francisco homeless residents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He was dubbed the "vampire slasher" by police.
"Prey is prey," Rudiger told authorities at that time.
Rudiger also used the victims’ blood to write a Chinese-language symbol for death.
In Friday’s lawsuit filed by Coderre’s mother Rita Coderre, she claims prison authorities were negligent in their duties to provide due care to her son. Aaron Coderre had been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder and assault.
“Staff immediately began life-saving measures, but Coderre succumbed to an injury consistent with being attacked by a weapon and was pronounced deceased at 4:33 p.m. by a CHCF physician,” state authorities said in a statement last year.
Rita Coderre disputes that Aaron Coderre received sufficient medical care following his stabbing, saying in the complaint that he “was in need of immediate and a higher level of medical care, after being stabbed.”
She claims her son was denied proper treatment for his mental health, leaving him “at risk of assault by other inmates.”
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