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A prisoner at the Utah State Prison in Draper was arrested Sunday for allegedly killing his cell mate.
The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, which is investigating the case for the Department of Corrections, arrested 29-year-old Athian Mawien. He was booked into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of criminal homicide.
Sheriff's Lt. Don Hutson said Mawien and his cell mate, 47-year-old Mark Helms, got into an argument Sunday just before noon. The fight turned physical and Mawien alleged punched Helms repeatedly. He then used a laundry bag tie to choke Helms. Hutson said it was still unclear if the beating or strangulation killed Helms. The cell the men shared was locked during the fight, Hutson said.
Other prisoners reported hearing the fight, but when guards arrived, Helms was dead, Hutson said. Investigators interviewed guards, other inmates and Mawien.
He talked to police for about three hours, saying they fought after a number of small "day-to-day things that come up when you have a group of men living together" added up. But, "none of the explanations he gave would rise even close to the level of beating someone up, let alone killing them," Hutson said.
They had only been cell mates for a few weeks, starting Nov. 6, said Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Steve Gehrke.
Hutson said Mawien will remain at the Salt Lake County jail during the investigation but will eventually be returned to the prison. Neither
Mawien pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted aggravated sex assault and one count of forcible sex abuse in October 2004. He was sentenced to seven years to life in prison. He is originally from Sudan.
Mawien was denied parole in a December 2007 hearing, said board of pardons spokesman Jim Hatch.
Helms was serving time on child sex abuse charges having sex with boys during get-togethers at his home in 1998 where he also videotaped sex acts and showed pornographic movies.
Helms was sentenced in 2000, after pleading guilty to filming himself having sex with five boys ages 12 to 14. He was serving a sentence of six years to life in prison, and scheduled to be paroled in April 2010, Hatch said.
The last murder at the prison was eight to nine years ago, Gehrke said.
