Death of convicted-killer inmate probed

The death Saturday of a prisoner, who was serving a life sentence at the state Correctional Institution at Dallas for the high-profile murder of a Pittsburgh high school student, remains under investigation.

Luzerne County Coroner John Corcoran said Howard Kelley, 25, became ill at the prison and was admitted to Wilkes-Barre General Hospital at 7:47 p.m. Friday. Kelley was pronounced dead at the hospital at 3:05 a.m. Saturday.

An autopsy was completed Sunday morning, but determination of the manner and cause of Kelley’s death are pending the results of toxicology and other tests, Corcoran said.

Asked if foul play was ruled out, Corcoran said neither he nor state police investigators saw anything “alarming” about the death. But “when you’re 25, you shouldn’t die. … We are going to get to the bottom of it,” he said.

A corrections officer at SCI Dallas referred comment to prison spokeswoman Robin Lucas, whom he said would be unavailable until today.

Howard “Duck” Kelley was originally convicted in Allegheny County before he was transferred to SCI Dallas, according to the state Department of Corrections Web site.

Kelley was one of three assailants involved in the March 16, 2005, drive-by shooting of 16-year-old Keith “Spud” Watts Jr., a sophomore at Carrick High School in south Pittsburgh, according to information provided by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Pittsburgh police believe the shooting was a retaliatory measure in an ongoing feud between residents of the south Pittsburgh towns of Beltzhoover and St. Clair Village that began at the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. But police told the Post-Gazette that the rivalry was not over turf or drugs, and no one knows exactly what started it.

This yearlong portion of the feud, which involved eight separate shootings, started June 22, 2004, when Jheri “Pound” Matthews was playing basketball in Beltzhoover. A bullet fired from a passing van struck Matthews in the neck, nearly killing him. Kelley was one of Matthews’ friends and a witness to the shooting, and word on the street was that Watts and a friend were the perpetrators.

Kelley in 2007 was convicted of pulling up to Watts’ vehicle a block away from Carrick High School and, with two friends, opening fire on and killing Watts, using SKS and AK-47 assault rifles, which police say are bought at gun shows by the bundle, the Post-Gazette reported.

Then in December 2008, Kelley was convicted of beating fellow prisoner George Kevin Hooper into a coma at the Allegheny County Jail in August 2007 prior to his transfer to SCI Dallas.

At Kelley’s assault trial, his attorney indicated that the feud between Kelley and Hooper, who punched Kelley in the face and broke his jaw prior to Hooper’s beating, was related to Kelley’s conviction in the Watts murder, the Post-Gazette reported.