Background: News footage of Salinas Valley State Prison (KTVU). Insets (left to right): Nicolas Young, Joseph Mendoza, and Edgar Frayre (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).
The family of a man stabbed to death inside a California prison has filed a lawsuit alleging that prison employees recorded the attack instead of helping.
According to the lawsuit, which was reviewed by Law&Crime, 36-year-old Joseph Mendoza was serving a 22-year prison term at Salinas Valley State Prison in January 2025 when he was caught with drugs that he intended to distribute to fellow inmates. After the bust, Mendoza told prison guards that he feared for his life, citing a “predictable and significant threat of violent retaliation” from the Norteño prison gang. Mendoza formally requested several times to be moved to protective custody, but he was never moved out of general population.
Other inmates found out about Mendoza”s request, and the lawsuit stated that this “escalat[ed] the risk to his life.”
According to the lawsuit, Mendoza was attacked on April 8, 2025, by two inmates associated with the Norteño prison gang, Nicolas Young and Edgar Frayre. While the three men were on the “dayroom floor,” which was known by staff as a “high-risk” area, Young and Frayre allegedly stabbed Mendoza “nearly 180 times” with shanks. Mendoza sustained deep, penetrating wounds to his head, face, neck, torso, and back.
Over the course of three minutes, and as time for Mendoza ran out, armed corrections officers watched from above and recorded the attack on their phones, the lawsuit says. Rather than try to intervene and stop the attack, the officers “stood by and observed” while Mendoza was “butchered” and bled to death on the floor, according to the complaint.
The officers allegedly never called for backup, nor did they get medical assistance for Mendoza until it was too late. Mendoza was pronounced dead at the scene.
The lawsuit alleged that the officers who were present for the attack failed to preserve evidence at the scene. Instead, following the attack and Mendoza’s death, employees at the prison shared the video of the attack and posted it to social media. The video of the “graphic assault” and Mendoza’s “mutilated remains” went viral, and it was seen by Mendoza’s family members, who have suffered “profound psychological and emotional trauma” on top of their grief.
During a press conference on Wednesday with Mendoza’s family and their legal team that was covered by local Fox affiliate KMPH, attorney Bryan Harrison said, “This was raw, bloody slaughter and no one had the right to turn his murder into entertainment. It’s perverse.”
In an interview with another local Fox affiliate, KTVU, Mendoza attorney Adante Pointer of Pointer & Buelna LLP, said, “We have not heard a peep from CDCR as to who did this,” adding, “All of the officers involved should be summarily fired.” No officers are identified by name in the lawsuit.
The investigation into the stabbing is still ongoing. In court documents reviewed by Law&Crime, California Attorney General Rob Bonta denied the claims made in the lawsuit. In a press release issued shortly after the killing, the CDCR stated that Mendoza was provided medical aid after the attack.
Mendoza’s father told KTVU, “I’m not looking for revenge.” He wants to make sure “somebody else’s son or daughter doesn’t come home in a box.”
