PORT ANGELES — Even inside jail segregation, the man accused of strangling 15-year-old Melissa Leigh Carter isn’t safe.
In a Clallam County Superior Court hearing Friday afternoon, Robert Covarrubias’ attorney said he would seek his client’s release if he couldn’t be protected inside the county jail.
“There are people out there who would like to take a piece out of my client,” Ralph Anderson of Clallam-Jefferson Public Defenders told Judge Ken Williams.
Anderson said Covarrubias was “jumped” last week — by two other inmates who knew Carter — inside the segregation area of the jail, where Covarrubias, 24, is being held.
Prosecutors, however, charged Covarrubias, and not the two men, in District Court with fourth-degree assault, a gross misdemeanor, for the fistfight.
No one was seriously injured.
Anderson said the jail conducted a subsequent investigation and found the other inmates, not Covarrubias, started the brawl. He plans to ask prosecutors to dismiss the assault charges and take more steps to keep his client safe.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Prentiss said he would look into the issues.
Trial later this year
Covarrubias likely will be tried later this year on a burglary charge in addition to murder for Carter’s death last December.
The girl’s body was found Dec. 26 in brush above the Port Angeles Waterfront Trail just east of the Red Lion Hotel, about a mile from where she was last seen attending a party at the Chinook Motel three days earlier.
Covarrubias also attended that party.
Police said they linked the man to Carter’s death through DNA evidence.
