By KATIE MELONE
The Hartford Courant
HARTFORD, Conn. — When the lives of Kevin Cales and Waldemar Rivera intersected at a Suffield prison, it would end in death for Cales.
Rivera was watching television news with fellow prison inmates earlier this year when he learned that his cousin, Maryneliz Jimenez, had died in a car crash nearly two years earlier.
In the prison showers a week later, court records say, Rivera told another inmate he was still in shock over her death. Jimenez was killed along with four others after her ex-boyfriend, Kevin Cales, chased her down in his car at speeds of up to 120 mph. Jimenez lost control of her car during the chase.
Convicted of manslaughter, Cales in April was sent to McDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield. He was put in the same 114-man cell block as Rivera, who had been serving time for robbery.
There, Rivera threatened Cales and warned him to seek transfer to another block, court records say.
“What am I gonna do? He didn’t move out; I can’t look at him every day,” Rivera said moments after stomping Cales’ head while the two were in the lunchroom, according to accounts by prison staff in an arrest-warrant affidavit.
“If I was doing life, I would have killed the guy, I just wanted to teach him a lesson,” guards quoted Rivera as saying.
Cales died hours later at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford.
Rivera, 28, was arraigned Wednesday in Superior Court in Enfield on charges of murder and first-degree assault. Bail was set at $1.5 million.
In a swift proceeding filmed by television news, Assistant State’s Attorney Christopher Parakilas didn’t object to the bail, calling it an “academic” exercise, given that Rivera is already in prison.
Rivera, wearing a full beard with his head shaved, said little during the proceeding. Afterward, outside the courtroom, Cales’ relatives were somber; one was teary.
At the time he was killed, Cales, 34, had served less than two months of his 79-year sentence for manslaughter in the May 27, 2006, car chase that killed Jimenez, 21, and four of her friends on Chamberlain Highway in Berlin.
Jimenez and Rivera are not related by blood; Rivera called her a cousin and treated her like one, relatives have said.
Rivera’s mother, Ilsa Rivera of Bristol, said last month that she does not believe her son intended to kill Cales, and she took issue with the way he has been portrayed in the media.
It is unclear how Cales and Rivera ended up in the same housing block in a system of more than 18,000 inmates.
There are no documents in either man’s prison file that indicate the two fought or reported problems with one another before the fatal confrontation.
When inmates are transferred to a facility, an assessment report is taken, and inmates are asked if they are related to any inmates in the prison system or have any problems with anyone in the prison system.
When Rivera, who had a long record of disciplinary problems in prison, was last asked in October 2006, he replied no.
When Cales was asked on April 23, he also answered no.
“Despite extensive efforts to protect offenders from each other by utilizing a range of intelligence gathering and other measures, we have no indication that either inmate made those statements known to staff,” said Brian Garnett, spokesman for the Department of Correction.
According to the arrest-warrant affidavit, it wasn’t until after the confrontation that Rivera told correctional staff that he had warned Cales that he wanted him off his prison block. Rivera threatened Cales five or six days before the assault, according to one correction officer, and again the day before the assault, according to another correction officer.
Inmates who feel threatened can alert staff and apply for protective custody, Garnett said. It appears neither did.
On May 13, authorities say, Rivera left the “chow line,” walked up to Cales and punched him to the ground. Rivera then delivered swift blows to Cales’ head, authorities say, putting Cales into a coma.
“He killed my cousin and her friends,” Rivera told a correction officer moments after the assault, according to the arrest warrant. “I told him before to get out of the unit and I couldn’t look at him anymore.”
Rivera “seemed arrogant and proud of himself” while making the statements, according to the account of correction Officer Edward T. Glover.
Copyright 2008 The Hartford Courant