Posted: 12/03/2011
By Kirk Mitchell
The Denver Post
A man who in 2000 killed an 11-year-old boy and threw him into a Littleton trash bin was killed under "suspicious circumstances" at Sterling Correctional Facility, officials said.
Lyle Brent White was pronounced dead at Denver Health Medical Center on Thursday, according to Michelle Weiss-Samaras, spokeswoman for the Denver Coroner's Office.
His body was taken back to Logan County for an autopsy scheduled for today, deputy coroner David Tennant said.
White, 40, was serving a life sentence for the January 2000 slaying of Centennial Elementary School fifth-grader Antonio Davalos.
Katherine Sanguinetti, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, said an inmate at Sterling has been placed in segregation. An investigation by the Inspector General's Office is underway.
The inmate had been in the prison's high-security section.
White was the second inmate killed at Sterling in five days. An inmate was killed in a minimum-security cellblock Nov. 25, Sanguinetti said. She did not know the name of that inmate.
Antonio was strangled in his grandmother's Littleton townhome, stuffed in a duffel bag and thrown in a Jefferson County strip-mall trash bin not far from Columbine High School.
During his trial, White blamed the murder on his 28-year-old brother, who has Down syndrome. He said he heard a crash and saw his brother standing at the bottom of the stairs with his foot on Antonio's throat. He claimed he wanted to protect his brother.
White had testified that he and his brother drove around town and to the mountains, and ate McDonald's food as the boy lay in the back of his van in the bag.
White had been living with Antonio's grandmother, and Antonio had stayed over the night before.
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