Man brutally kills cellmate, then washes blood away in toilet, CA officials say

A 22-year-old man was accused of killing his cellmate at a California prison, officials said.

On March 17, deputies responded to a cell at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin after getting reports of a physical altercation between two maximum security inmates, one later being identified at Paula Fa’aui, according to a County of Alameda probable cause statement.

When they opened the cell’s door, they found an unresponsive man who had head trauma and had lost an excessive amount of blood, officials said.

The man, Elias Rivera, was transferred to the Eden Medical Center where he was eventually pronounced dead, officials said.

Fa’aui was interviewed and confessed to punching, stomping and kicking Rivera’s head before washing his feet in the cell’s toilet, officials said.

Fa’aui was in jail custody after being charged in the fatal 2023 shooting of Julian Carillo Garcia, according to a news release by the city of Oakland.

Although the autopsy had not revealed a cause of death as of the April 7 complaint, officials believe Rivera died from blunt force trauma to the head, the document said.

Fa’aui was arrested by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office on a felony murder charge, officials said.

Dublin is about a 30-mile drive southeast of San Francisco.