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77-year-old sex offender in state prison dies of Covid

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September 8th, 2020 by Ric Hanson

(Radio Iowa) — A 77-year-old state prison inmate has died of complications related to Covid-19. Richard Leroy Peters of Evansdale had been in prison since early 2014. He’d been committed on a special lifetime sentence after being found guilty of sexually abusing two girls when they were six and seven. He had a previous child sex abuse conviction in 1988. Peters died early Sunday afternoon in a prison hospice unit in Coralville. An Iowa Department of Corrections news release indicates Peters had multiple pre-existing medical conditions.

The Iowa Department of Corrections website indicates 74 inmates in the Medical and Classification Center in Coralville, 132 inmates in Mount Pleasant and one inmate at the prison in Newton have Covid. More than 600 inmates and 100 staffers who work in the state prison system have recovered from the virus.