By admin 
A prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California died after being attacked with improvised weapons, authorities said.
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Rene B. Lopez, 31, was found unresponsive at the prison in Crescent City about 6 p.m. Thursday and was pronounced dead less than an hour later, prison officials said in a Friday news release.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said surveillance video appeared to show prisoners Joseph W. Morales and Richard Garcia attacking Lopez and then handing improvised weapons to Estevan Saucedo, another prisoner, who threw them in a garbage can. Staff later recovered the weapons, CDCR said.
Prisoners Jose D. Rodriguez and Freddie G. Sanchez also appeared to have been involved in the attack, according to officials. All five prisoners were placed in restricted housing while the death was investigated.
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Lopez had been sentenced in Los Angeles County to 29 years in prison for assault with a semiautomatic firearm with enhancements for street gang activity, inflicting great bodily injury and use of a firearm, officials said. He entered the state prison system in 2013.
Crescent City is about 370 miles northwest of Sacramento on the California coast, near the Oregon border.
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