In the last moments of his life, Brandon Yates repeatedly pressed the panic button inside his San Diego County jail cell and cried out for help.
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An unidentified sheriff’s deputy passed by as Alvin Ruis was choking the life out of his cellmate in January 2024, but the guard did not stop or intervene, Ruis testified during his murder trial this past week.
“He had to have pushed it five or six times,” the defendant told the jury, referring to the emergency alarm in the cell. “He was screaming, ‘He’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me!’ I was waiting for the deputies to come.”
Ruis, a 39-year-old former high school wrestler and professional jockey, is facing charges of first- and second-degree murder in San Diego Superior Court in relation to the Jan. 16, 2024, killing of Yates inside the Central Jail.
Both men were suffering from mental illness before being placed in the same cell, court records show.
Yates, who was 24, had been arrested less than 24 hours before he died after being found asleep in someone’s backyard shed. Ruis had been jailed for violating a restraining order taken out by his wife.
Ruis testified last week that he had already exhibited violent and antisocial behavior in jail. He had been designated “keep separate,” meaning he was not supposed to be housed with other inmates at the time deputies moved Yates into the cell.
He said he wasn’t intent on killing Yates; he was trying to drive the devil out of him.
By his own telling, Ruis watched as Yates’ head turned purple from lack of oxygen as his hands tightened around his neck. He stopped the attack because he did not like the way Yates looked, but it was too late, he said.
Ruis then poured liquid soap into Yates’ mouth — an action he said he thought might somehow spare the victim’s life. He followed by stripping Yates naked and tying him upright with scraps from the clothing Yates had been wearing.
“God was telling me I had all the time in the world,” Ruis testified. “No one was going to come and save him.”
Closing arguments in the case are scheduled to be presented Monday before the jury is asked to weigh the charges.
If Ruis is convicted, a second phase in the trial will be held to determine whether he were insane at the time he killed his victim.
Yates is one of scores of men and women who have died in Sheriff’s Office custody in recent years amid allegations of deputy negligence or misconduct, according to a spate of civil lawsuits filed against San Diego County.
The county Board of Supervisors has already approved paying tens of millions of dollars in settlements to resolve claims filed by relatives of people who died in sheriff’s custody.
The civil case brought by Yates’ family last year has been delayed through the Ruis criminal trial. Court filings in their lawsuit assert that other detainees also called for help — but that deputies did not immediately respond.
“It never occurred to me that his life was at risk,” Yates’ mother, Andrea Carrier, told The San Diego Union-Tribune in an interview last year.
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In an unusual move, San Diego County filed a countersuit last year against jail medical services provider NaphCare in the case, claiming the contractor contributed to Yates’ death.
Taking the witness stand in his own defense last week, Ruis outlined a troubling series of developments that led to the killing.
He said he began experiencing delusions and hallucinations in the fall of 2023, hearing voices he thought were from God. Later, he became convinced he was receiving signals and messages from Travis Barker, drummer for the San Diego rock band Blink-182.
Ruis also said he became convinced World War III was imminent and that San Diego would be targeted due to its concentration of military bases.
By October of that year, he packed up his family and moved them to Montana, where he thought they would be safe. He began planning a music festival, but he continued decompensating and was involuntarily placed in a psychiatric hospital.
Ruis’ wife and children returned home to Eastlake, while he spent days in the backwoods in Montana communing with nature before returning to San Diego County, Ruis testified.
He was arrested in early December after turning up at the house in Chula Vista and assaulting his wife. Much of the attack was caught on a Ring outdoor camera and played for the jury last week.
When he was released from custody several days later, Ruis testified that he had experienced a religious calling to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral. He believed he was the reincarnation of the apostle and shared multiple similarities with him, including horsemanship and shipbuilding.
“The world was going to see that I was Saint Paul, and I was going to have this coming-out party,” he told the jury.
But on the plane to London, he thought he saw a demon in the face of another passenger and shoved her, along with a flight attendant who stepped in to help. Police arrested Ruis as soon as he landed in London, and he was eventually placed in another psychiatric ward.
After being medicated against his will, Ruis said his condition improved enough to convince a judge that he was stable. But he was ordered to leave the United Kingdom and returned to San Diego.
Days later, Ruis appeared again at the family home in Eastlake and was arrested for violating the restraining order. He spent three tumultuous weeks in San Diego County jail before Yates was placed in his cell hours after being arrested.
Ruis said he was initially afraid of taking medication while in jail because he thought the deputies were trying to poison him, but he later requested prescription drugs to help him sleep and calm his “raging mind.”
But only after his attack on Yates did he begin taking psychotropic drugs to control his mental illness, Ruis testified.
Defense attorney Gretchen von Helms sought to show jurors that her client was not legally responsible for the Yates killing because he was mentally ill, while Deputy District Attorney Andrew “Drew” Hart worked to establish that Ruis had acted knowingly during the attack.
“You knew that Brandon Yates was a real human being,” the prosecutor asked him. “Yes,” the defendant replied.
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