The Minnesota Department of Corrections has identified the victim of a suspected homicide in Lino Lakes prison last week as 63-year-old Steve Paul Patchen.

Patchen, who was serving a nearly 20-year sentence for sexually assaulting multiple teenage girls, was found unresponsive in his cell on Oct. 5 at 10:30 p.m. Medical personnel pronounced Patchen dead later that night after failing to resuscitate him, said spokesman Andy Skoogman.

Skoogman also identified the suspect, who is being held in segregation pending the investigation, as a 42-year-old serving a life sentence for a murder conviction. The Star Tribune does not name suspects unless they have been charged with a crime.

The corrections department’s Office of Special Investigations is leading a probe into the death with help from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Lino Lakes Police.

The killing, which sent the Lino Lakes facility into lockdown, marks the first suspected homicide in a Minnesota prison since 2021, when 56-year-old James Francis Howard was beaten to death in his Rush City prison cell. Before that case, no homicides had been reported in a state prison since 2013.

In 2018, correctional officer Joseph Gomm, 45, was killed in the Stillwater correctional facility by inmate Edward Muhammad Johnson, who was serving a nearly 29-year sentence for second-degree murder. Johnson, who attacked Gomm with a hammer, pled guilty to first-degree murder for killing Gomm and is now serving a life sentence.