Adam Eugene Avalos, 29, of Las Cruces was stabbed multiple times in a shower adjacent to a day room in the Dona Ana County Detention Center on Sunday, and fellow inmate Dominic Martin Montoya, also 29, is considered a suspect, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported today on its Web site.

Avalos had been jailed for an alleged probation violation stemming from a 2004 drug conviction, while Montoya is jailed on three counts of strong-arm robbery and alleged probation and parole violation, the Sun-News reported.

Guards found Avalos unconscious on the shower floor after responding to reports of a fight around 8 p.m. Sunday, and Avalos was later pronounced dead at the scene.

Montoya was found in the adjacent dayroom with "significant amounts of blood on his clothing," according to a statement by county officials.

Avalos' parents claim their son should have been separated from other inmates after he was involved in several fights since being arrested more than a week ago, and Dona Ana county officials have launched an investigation, the Sun-News reported.

Avalos's brother, Jesse Avalos Jr., is serving a life sentence for the 1998 rape and murder of New Mexico State University student Carly Martinez, the Sun-News said.

Adam Avalos had been called as a witness in the 2000 trial of his brother in the kidnapping, rape and murder of the 18-year-old NMSU freshman from El Paso, but he was excused from testifying after invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege, according to earlier Albuquerque Journal reports of that trial.

Adam Avalos, who was 21 at the time and in prison on a probation violation for a residential burglary conviction, had told police and a grand jury that his brother had asked him for a vehicle to help move Carly Martinez's body, but rather than risk perjury charges for contradicting his earlier testimony, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

Jesse Avalos' co-defendant in the Martinez slaying, Jason Desnoyers, was  convicted of all charges, including murder, in a November 1999 trial.

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