An ex-Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who was sentenced to death for fatally shooting a Yorba Linda supermarket manager during a robbery in 1994 died on Wednesday, Dec, 21, in his San Quentin cell, authorities said.
Stephen Redd, 78, was found unresponsive in his cell at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on Wednesday afternoon and was pronounced dead by medical staff, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The cause of his death had not been determined as of Thursday.
Redd was a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy from 1967 to 1973 when he resigned and, subsequently, turned to a life of crime, court records show.
During a holdup at an Alpha Beta store in Yorba Linda on July 18, 1994, Redd shot 34-year-old Timothy McVeigh after he interrupted the robbery while coming to the aid of a co-worker.
Redd then fled with $156 dollars.
He was arrested a year later by a U.S. Park Police detective in San Francisco. Semi-automatic weapons, grenades and other munitions were found in the trunk of his car during the arrest.
Redd was sentenced in Orange County in 1997 after he was convicted of first-degree murder, second-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, attempted murder, and second-degree robbery.
He previously had served 10 years in prison after he was found guilty of robbing a La Habra bank in 1982 and wounding a police officer during his escape, records show.
Redd was among 650 others who have been placed on death row in California, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
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The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, formerly known as the San Quentin State Prison and home to the largest “death row” in the country, transitioned into a rehabilitation and education facility earlier this year.
More than 100 death-sentenced people previously housed at San Quentin State Prison were transferred to seven other maximum security prisons in the state.
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on the death penalty for all inmates on California’s death row.
The state carried out its last two executions between 2005 and 2006, administering lethal drugs to condemned killers Stanley “Tookie” Williams and Clarence Ray Allen.
