UPDATE: District Judge Chris Welch has ordered that the charge of criminal homicide against Dwight Darnell Bowen to be held for the Indiana County Court of Common Pleas. No word yet on when the trial will take place.
WHAT WE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED
A preliminary hearing is scheduled today for a state prison inmate charged with criminal homicide for the death of his cellmate while both were in SCI Pine Grove in White Township last winter.
43-year-old Dwight Darnell Bowen, who is currently in SCI Houtzdale, is accused of killing 32-year-old Luis Antonio Santiago on January 1st. Investigators say Bowen called for prison guards shortly after 10 PM that night. They found him at his cell window and Santiago lying unresponsive on the floor, without a pulse and not breathing. Santiago was later pronounced dead at the Indiana Regional Medical Center, and an autopsy the next day established the cause of death as asphyxia due to venous obstruction. Among the evidence collected at the scene was blood found on a cabinet, with DNA confirming Santiago’s blood and a match with Bowen.
Bowen is serving life in prison for guilty pleas to the 2001 murders of two toddlers, ages 3 and 1, in Philadelphia. They were killed in the Molotov cocktail firebombing of a rowhouse after a dispute between Bowen and another man.
Bowen is due before District Judge Chris Welch at 8:30 this morning.
