A Lancaster County grand jury has indicted a 38-year-old inmate for first-degree murder in connection to the killing of his cellmate in 2022. In a true bill filed Monday afternoon, Tyler Stanford stands accused of killing Phillip Garcia "purposely and with deliberate and premeditated malice." He hasn't yet had a court appearance on the charge.
Tyler Stanford In a search warrant filed in 2022, a Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Henry Dimitroff asked a Lincoln judge for an order to get DNA from Stanford, who had been Garcia's cellmate but now is serving his sentence at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. Dimitroff said prison staff discovered Garcia unresponsive in his restricted housing cell, on his back with his legs crossed and a bedsheet fashioned into a rope around his neck on the afternoon of Oct. 29, 2022.
Staff said the cell was in disarray as if there had been a struggle and his cellmate, Stanford, was out of breath. When asked what happened, he allegedly said "no comment," according to the court document. Despite efforts to save him, Garcia was pronounced dead at 4:24 p.
m. that day. Garcia Dimitroff said a day later Stanford called his mother and said he had been trying to get mental health help for a week and had been ignored and just blacked out on Oct.
29. "I don't really know what happened," he told her, according to the investigator. Stanford is serving a sentence of 13 to 17 years for attempted assault on an officer and possession of a weapon by a pro.
