Grand jury finds no criminal wrongdoing in deaths of 7 men, but expresses concerns in one

Five had serious health issues, but the deaths of two of the men — Bobby Wallace and Dale “Ed” Kesselring Jr., who both were in their 40s — were more complicated.

The first likely was a K2 overdose in prison, though the grand jury stopped short of reaching that conclusion because the autopsy couldn’t determine a cause of death. In part, due to the synthetic nature of the drug meant to mimic marijuana. In part, “hampered severely by the actions of correctional staff.”

The second death, at the Lancaster County Adult Detention Facility, was deemed natural causes, a “sudden death following extreme agitation with self-injury and probable psychosis,” of a man waiting for a bed at the Lincoln Regional Center.

According to grand jury testimony in the first case, on June 18, 2023, Wallace, 45, was found unconscious in his unlocked cell in a cell block “known for using K2” at the Reception and Treatment Center, a state prison on the west edge of Lincoln.

Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Henry Dimitroff said that night a lieutenant told him he believed it may be an overdose, considering Wallace had been a known user of K2, which in its liquid form is dried on paper and smoked by inmates, making it easier to get in and harder to track.

The day of Wallace’s death, a staff member doing cell counts was confronted by other inmates who told him to check out Wallace’s cell, where he found Wallace sitting in a chair.

Staff tried to save him, but it was too late.

Earlier in the day, Dimitroff said, the same staff member had noticed other inmates intoxicated and told a lieutenant, but there was no indication anything had been done.

Video of the cell block showed inmates walk in and close the cell door at one point, then leave laughing, one of them appearing to be mocking a seizure. No one seemed concerned.

Wallace was discovered three hours later.

After he was taken out of the cell, a staff member from another housing unit — under suspicion herself of bringing contraband into the prison — put Wallace’s cellmate back in the cell and closed the door, which Dimitroff said hampered his investigation.

“Right now there’s just a big question mark of what was in that cell when (the cellmate) was put back in there,” he said.

Dimitroff said he wasn’t able to conclude whether the staff member was responsible for bringing in the K2 that caused Wallace’s death.

“As of now, no; however I am still investigating her,” he said.

The Journal Star has chosen not to name the staff member, who no longer works at the prison and hasn’t been charged.

Dimitroff said he would have to be able to trace the exact bundle or shipment of K2 that Wallace used and find out who brought it in and how. 

But he acknowledged some of the actions of Corrections Department staff frustrated him in the investigation. Aside from not securing the cell for investigators, another staff member emptied the trash can before he could check it for potential evidence.

It prompted juror 13 to say: “Honestly, there’s a lot of disturbing things going on here.”

In the report that followed, the grand jury said because of staff actions they were “left to speculate what may have been found had the crime scene been secured immediately.”

Based on the evidence available, they couldn’t find probable cause.

“However, our conclusion may have been different if the proper procedures were followed and a full investigation could have been done,” the grand jury wrote.

Kesselring’s death at the county jail pointed out a different kind of shortcoming: the wait time for someone with mental illness to be transferred from the jail to the Lincoln Regional Center for treatment.

Police arrested Kesselring on Sept. 22, 2023, for a violent assault after a female relative woke to him hitting her with a baseball bat.

Kesselring had a significant history of mental health issues prior to his arrest, and by Nov. 19, 2023, his court case was on hold. He’d been found incompetent for trial and was waiting to be transferred to the regional center to work to restore his competency.

LRC wait times for people in jail have been a problem statewide, prompting the Legislature to pass a law in 2022 allowing jails to bill the state if an individual placed by court order in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services to receive treatment to restore competency hasn’t been moved there within 30 days. 

At the jail in Lincoln, the waiting average has been as long as 97 days as of December 2021, but had decreased to 10 days as of this June.

In November, when Kesselring was waiting for a bed, it was closer to two months. 

Lincoln Police Investigator Trent Petersen said on Nov. 19, 2023, during a video visit with two relatives, Kesselring started talking to himself and then banging the phone receiver on the table and making erratic movements with his head.

According to the autopsy report, he had become agitated and was headbutting, kicking and punching objects, leaving small injuries on his head and hands.

Another report described him as staring at the metal visitation kiosk, sticking his hands against it, at times with increased vigor, muttering and appearing catatonic.

Petersen said Kesselring had started bleeding, so staff ended the visit early, put him in restraints and took him back to his single cell, where he was lying on his bed shaking, in what appeared to him to be a manic state.

Staff transferred him to the infirmary for closer observation.

Medical staff there gave him medication and water to try to help calm him before he laid down, and curled up on the floor. Staff checked on him every 20 minutes. After the third check, the nurse noticed he hadn’t changed positions, checked closer and found his face blue.

He started CPR and called for another nurse to call 911. They tried to save him, but it was too late.

Petersen said from what he saw on the jail video it looked like it may have been excited delirium.

“I have very little doubt that he was in a manic or a mental health episode during a large portion of this contact, from the time when he was in his video Zoom with his family members to the point of the time of his death,” he said.

Corrections Sgt. Darryl Shafer, who was on watch that night, said when Kesselring got to the infirmary he was going from wall to wall pushing his knuckles into the wall.

“He was definitely going through something,” he said. “It was more like he just wasn’t completely in tune with what was going on.”

Asked if he or other staff could’ve done anything better or different, Shafer said he didn’t know what that would be.

“I don’t feel that a jail setting is necessarily the right place for some people that are going through severe mental issues, but I don’t know what the right place is. … Seems to be we get a lot of people with mental issues. And I think we deal with it pretty well, but it is trying,” Shafer said.

He said he wished he had a tool that could’ve helped Kesselring that night.

“I felt very frustrated that night that I couldn’t do more,” Shafer said.

Corrections Director Bradley Johnson said, from his review, staff performed very professionally. They were calm, used their training and compassion to deal with an individual who was being difficult at the time.

“This was an unfortunate event,” he said. “But we deal with people sometimes in compromised states or poor lifestyles and not in the best of health and sometimes you can do everything right, but bad, bad things can happen.”

Dr. Michelle Elieff, who did the autopsy, said Kesselring had an enlarged heart and people with enlarged hearts who exert themselves release emergency hormones that make them more likely to have an abnormal heart rhythm. Medication could slightly increase the likelihood and be “the straw that caused the person to die.”

She ultimately determined, as the grand jury did, that Kesselring’s cause of death was “sudden death following extreme agitation with self-injury and probable psychosis in the setting of mental illness.”

The rest of the deaths reviewed involved serious health issues, according to the Journal Star review of the grand jury transcripts.

* John M. S. Brown, 41, had end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and died Oct. 19, 2023, at his parents’ home in Lincoln. He had been granted a medical parole due to the terminal illness and was serving a 15- to 20-year sentence on an attempted methamphetamine charge out of Lancaster County.

* Jose Cabrera-Lomeli, 52, died of cancer in his skilled nursing room at RTC on Feb. 26, 2024. He was serving a sentence of 160 to 220 years in prison for multiple counts of first-degree sexual assault of a child out of Sarpy County.

* Roberto Cuik Sterio, 77, died of heart failure March 17, 2024, at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, where he was being held pretrial on Hall County charges due to the need for higher medical care. He was facing charges of first-degree sexual assault of a child and child abuse.

* Estell Jennings, 44, died in his cell of cardiopulmonary arrest due to cancer at RTC on May 11, 2024. He was nearly 10 years into a 60- to 80-year sentence for attempted first degree sexual assault of a child out of Douglas County, two counts of first degree sexual assault out of Sarpy County, and two counts of incest out of Sarpy County.

* Roger McPherson, 66, died June 19, 2024, in his skilled nursing cell at RTC of cardiopulmonary collapse due to kidney failure after refusing dialysis for several days. He was serving a 50- to 80-year sentence out of Lancaster County that dated back to 2002 for two counts of first degree sexual assault of a child and two counts of child abuse.