Prosecutors have charged a man with first-degree murder in the bloody Adams County jail death of his cellmate, a 26-year-old Denver man attacked in a maximum-security pod last week.
Kyle Yoemans was found fatally injured in his cell Feb. 8, surrounded by a pool of blood. Court documents show he had a large gash that ran from the top of his left forehead to the top of his left eyebrow and to the bridge of his nose.
Records show that the injury was so severe that his skull was visible. He was pronounced dead at the Platte Valley Medical Center.
Yoemans’ cellmate, 28-year-old Che Bachicha, has been formally charged in the slaying, according to Sue Lindsay, spokeswoman for the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. He appeared in court Tuesday morning and advised of the allegations against him.
Records show he is being held without bail.
The Adams County Sheriff’s Office says a jail deputy found Yoemans unconscious, not breathing and without a pulse on the floor of his cell at about 12:30 a.m. during a routine check of inmates in a maximum-security pod. He was revived by jail staff and taken to the hospital, where he died.
According to an arrest affidavit for Bachicha, the deputy who found Yoemans looked into the men’s cell window to find Yoemans lying face down in the corner of the cell with his head in a pool of blood roughly two feet in diameter.
Bachicha was sitting on the floor next to the cell’s entrance door, the affidavit said, wearing jail-issued orange-striped pants and a blood-soaked washcloth around the back of his neck. Bachicha also had apparent blood spatter on his glasses and scratch marks on his neck and shoulder, as well as redness on his chest and scalp.
Bachicha’s hands were swollen, the affidavit said, and appeared to have dried blood on them.
Sheriff’s deputies interviewed inmates in surrounding cells who reported hearing pounding — for as long as 10 minutes — as well as a “ding” sound, according to the affidavit. One inmate also told investigators he heard someone who sounded like Bachicha yell: “Now what! Now what!”
Court records show Yoemans was booked into the Adams County jail Sept. 23 after being arrested on charges of attempted first-degree murder out of Northglenn. Bachicha was booked into the jail Jan. 22 on charges of attempted first-degree murder.
Bachicha’s arrest affidavit shows the men were housed together starting Jan. 30.
Bachicha has a long criminal record in Colorado dating to 2006 that includes arrests on charges of domestic violence, assault with a deadly weapon and felony menacing, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
At the time of Yoemans’ death, Bachicha was jailed in Adams County on suspicion of in Brighton on Jan. 22, leading to the first-degree attempted murder charge, police say.
The Adams County coroner still has not formally released the cause and manner of Yoeman’s death.
Investigators have not said what motivated the killing, but the arrest affidavit says Bachicha made a call Feb. 5 to a woman and asked about “that fool Amanda was dating.”
“Che Bachicha stated his name was ‘Kyle’ and he thought he was dead but now believed Kyle was his cellmate,” the affidavit says.
Yoemans is the second man to die in the Adams County jail since November.
On Dec. 28, facility. He was serving a one-year sentence stemming from a felony DUI.
Briones fell ill at about 1 a.m. and was taken to the jail’s medical ward where he received help for 30 to 40 minutes before dying, officials said. His cause and manner of death have not been released, but the sheriff’s office says he did not commit suicide and no deputies used force against him.
