FIRST ON FOX: A convicted California killer whose death sentence Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon abandoned this fall has died in prison, according to the victim’s family.
Scott Forrest Collins was 21 when he robbed and shot Fred Rose, a 41-year-old father of three, “execution-style” in January 1992.
Gascon asked a judge to vacate Collins’ death sentence early last year, and he was removed from death row in San Quentin State Prison and transferred to the California Correctional Institution in September.
The death was confirmed by Rose’s daughter and her attorney Wednesday evening.
He died around Jan. 15, said Heather Scott, who was 12 years old at the time of her father’s murder. Autopsy results were pending, and she has not yet learned the cause of Collins’ death.
CALIFORNIA MURDER VICTIM’S FAMILY APPALED BY GASCON PUSH TO DROP KILLER’S DEATH SENTENCE
Fred Rose and his family shortly before his 1992 murder.
(Bob Baker)
California prison records show the killer was no longer listed as in custody Wednesday evening. After his death sentence was vacated, he was given life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
State corrections officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
News of Collins’ death comes just days after the shooting murder of another Los Angeles criminal whose Gascon’s office went easy on.
A 17-year-old hit-and-run driver who admitted to speeding the wrong way down a backstreet in a stolen car and bowling into a mother walking her 8-month-old in a stroller was gunned down in Palmdale. He had served a sentence of just a few months at a probation camp last year.
LOS ANGELES HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER WHO PLOWED INTO MOM AND BABY IN STOLEN CAR IS MURDERED AFTER LIGHT SENTENCE
Collins was out on parole for another armed robbery when he killed Rose.
He was later accused of attempting to harm and intimidate witnesses and Rose’s family before trial.
Convicted murderer and death row inmate Scott Forrest Collins in…
