• The parents of a woman who was beaten to death at a county jail last year are suing the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, alleging failures by several of its leaders and deputies allowed her to be killed by her cellmate.

    Chief among the failures, the lawsuit says: Deputies gave Kaushal Niroula, who was transgender, a sex offender cellmate with a violent past.

    The new filing adds to the cascade of similar suits over inmate deaths that have been recently against the department, which is also being investigated by the state attorney general over the deaths and other allegations of misconduct and civil rights violations.

    A record 18 inmates died in the jails in 2022.

    The suit states that the department acted negligently and in violation of both the constitution and state law by allowing Niroula to be housed in a cell with Ronald Sanchez, a man who was a convicted sex offender and had a history of violent behavior. The sheriff’s department manages all jails in Riverside County.

    The suit states that sheriff’s personnel knew Sanchez posed an imminent threat to Niroula, who was particularly vulnerable because she was transgender and HIV-positive, and yet the sheriff’s department allowed the two to be housed together at the Cois Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta.

    The cops murdered her.

    • Murrieta

      That’s the problem right there.

      Murrieta is very much part of an island of conservativism in the rest of California. It’s very much a green grass, “whites only” kind of place. Oodles of Mormons. Not exactly friendly to LGBTQ folk.

      I lived there. I went to high school there. It was where I voted for the first time.

      I remember in high school thinking a girl was cute and she invited me over on a Sunday morning. She picked me up for what I thought was going to be a day of just hanging out at her place - but instead, she dragged me to her Mormon church. The preacher spoke out about how proud they were that they were able to pass Prop 8 (which banned gay marriage in California), how hard they fought for it, and how evil LGBTQ folk were. I was disgusted, but at the time I couldn’t drive (and thus couldn’t leave). When I finally escaped, I made a point to never talk to that girl again.

      That is absolutely par for the course in Murrieta (and Temecula). They live in a total bubble and refuse to acknowledge that they’re part of California proper. A friendly reminder that the Temecula Valley School District (which represents both Murrieta and Temecula) is being sued by the State of California because they decided to promote racism and anti-LGBTQ sentiment within schools, in violation of state law.

      Public Counsel, the nonprofit group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Temecula students, parents and teachers, claims the policy has been used by school board members to stop teaching “any concepts that conflict with their ideological viewpoints, including the history of the LGBTQ rights movement and the existence of racism in today’s society.”

      Murrieta-Temecula is full of bigots, all hiding under their mask. But when you live there, you see the mask slip… especially if you’re a cis white male “good ol’ boy” like how I present.