The Chief Medical Examiner of Pima County, Ariz., said the 21-year-old Maui inmate who died Aug. 6 at Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona was strangled.

Johnathan Namauleg was serving three years for third-degree arson, and his death has been ruled a homicide.

He shared a cell with Jason Lee McCormick, 41, who activated a distress button, advising the corrections officers his cellmate needed medical attention, the Department of Public Safety said in a news release Aug. 7.

McCormick was convicted of murdering a visiting Pittsburgh professor at the professor’s Waikiki apartment in 1996. Information brought out at McCormick’s trial showed that McCormick incorporated a sleeper hold or chokehold on the professor, causing his death.