During a court hearing on Tuesday, the attorney for one of the four defendants in the mass shooting at a southeast Fresno football party confirmed his client’s death.
Along with three other defendants, 30-year-old Porge Kue faced charges of four murders and other offenses in connection with the alleged gang-related shooting that occurred on November 17, 2019, resulting in the deaths of four persons and injuries to six others.
According to Fresno County Deputy District Attorney Kelly Smith, the cause of Kue’s death was not immediately known, and the investigation into his death remained ongoing.
Tony Botti, a spokesperson for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, had verified that another inmate was not responsible for Kue’s death.
Kue was taken into custody at the Fresno County Jail on June 16 and pronounced dead four days later, according to Botti. A probable drug overdose, he added, was being investigated. He was discovered unconscious in his jail cell, according to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.
Kue and three others were indicted on 12 counts of attempted murder, one count of conspiracy to commit murder, and four counts of murder in the January 2020 criminal complaint. In 2020, Kue allegedly entered a not-guilty plea, according to authorities.
Each defendant’s bail was set at over $24 million.
The killing of a relative of one of the suspects on November 17, 2019, prompted numerous individuals, including Kue, to gather at a residence on November 17, 2019, to plot revenge, according to court records. They drove to a house on Lamona, where three of the guys acted as lookouts.
The federal government also indicted three other males who have been identified by federal agents as being associated with the Mongolian Boys Society, a gang that operates in the Visalia and Fresno areas. Allegedly plotting the shooting as retaliation for the day before the murder of a gang member’s brother, all seven of them have been apprehended.
According to police authorities and relatives of the victims, none of the football partygoers were involved with gangs or had any bearing on the shooting that took place there.
