Nevada prison guards beat inmate Malik Avila during cell extraction, causing fatal brain injury; coroner ruled death natural

On November 4, 2025, a Nevada Department of Corrections Correctional Emergency Response Team was dispatched to Malik Avila's cell at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs, Nevada, at 4 a.m. after a family member called the prison to report Avila was having a seizure. According to the incident report, the team went "hands-on" and "took him down" after Avila allegedly became "combative"; a recording later obtained by the family's attorney from a prison-system whistleblower captured Avila's last audible words: "Please stop. Please stop." A wrongful-death lawsuit filed August 4, 2026 by Avila's parents alleges guards instead beat him, punching him in the face until he collapsed and struck his head, causing a traumatic brain injury.

A prison nurse called 911 as Avila convulsed, telling the dispatcher she suspected he had taken "spice," a claim a toxicology test at the hospital later returned negative on. Avila was airlifted to Mountain View Hospital, where doctors declared him brain-dead and placed him on life support; the lawsuit alleges Nevada Department of Corrections officials, including Warden Jeremy Bean, did not tell Avila's family for eight days that he was on life support, and separately told them he had not been in an altercation and might have "ingested a substance." Avila died November 22, 2025, 18 days after the incident. The Clark County Coroner's Office found the cause of death to be lack of oxygen and brain damage but classified the death as natural, a finding Avila's family and attorney dispute given the recording and the injury findings.

The lawsuit is one of several the Avila family's attorney, James Urrutia, has filed against Nevada corrections officials. State lawmakers had separately questioned corrections officials in July 2026 after learning 166 people had died in Nevada Department of Corrections custody since 2024, 98 of them classified as natural deaths like Avila's. In a similar case Urrutia's firm litigated, the state's Office of Inspector General recommended criminal charges after another inmate's in-custody death was also classified as natural, but the attorney general's office declined to prosecute; that inmate's family received a $4.6 million settlement in October 2025.