PHOENIX — It’s a story ABC15 broke earlier this year: an inmate in the 4th Avenue jail complex was accused of murdering his cellmate, 28-year-old Darshaquise Duran.
“He was so amazing. He was caring, loving, compassionate. He loved me so much,” Duran’s mother, Thelma, told ABC15. “He had so many dreams.”
Thelma said Duran was an aspiring musician but battled depression and addiction issues. He moved away from his family in Texas, landing in and out of homelessness in Arizona. He was arrested several times on drug and theft charges.
“That doesn’t make him a bad person. He was just lost and confused and depressed,” Thelma said. "It’s not an excuse. It’s his reality.”
Duran ended up in jail again last year. In May of 2024, Duran was arrested with his brother for allegedly stealing cigarettes from a Phoenix convenience store. Court records indicate the brothers fought the store attendant during the theft and both faced charges of aggravated robbery.
Their mom helped turn them in. Court records show Thelma told police she was “saddened to see that her sons were involved with a police matter but was willing to assist with the investigation as she stated that they were homeless and using drugs and needed to get off the street.”
Thelma told ABC15 she thought she wouldn’t have to worry about her sons' safety in custody.
“I was relieved because I was like ‘ok he’s in jail now, he’s going to be ok, he’s safe.’ But I guess I was wrong,” Thelma said. “ The jail did not protect him. He was not safe in jail.”
Duran’s cellmate for his final 10 days of life in the 4th Avenue Jail was Muhammad Toure. According to court records, Toure told investigators he choked Duran until he passed out and then tried to hang him inside the cell. When that didn’t work, he put Duran's unconscious head in the cell’s toilet and stepped on it. Toure allegedly told investigators the Dec. 29, 2024, attack lasted “about an hour.”
Duran was taken to the hospital and died on Jan. 2, 2025. He was 28. His mother could only recognize his body by his tattoo.
“Everything was just purple and out and it was just so bad,” Thelma said. “ I’ve never seen anything like it. His face was just a big swollen bruise. His whole face was just purple and black.”
“The details are heartbreaking because it is such a gruesome murder,” said Donna Leone Hamm of Middle Ground Prison Reform, an organization that has advocated for the rights of inmates for four decades. Hamm called Duran’s death preventable and avoidable and said there were warning signs.
Toure had pled guilty to aggravated assault in a December 2023 attack on a different cellmate, also in the 4th Avenue Jail.
Records show Toure grabbed his cellmate in that attack from behind, choking him unconscious. Then he hit him with a plastic meal tray. That cellmate survived, but investigators in court documents reported finding “massive amounts of blood” inside the cell.
“Why would they put him in that cell with anybody?” Thelma asked. “Why would they put that man in that cell with anybody?”
We took that question directly to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, who gave us a first-hand look at the jail intake and classification process.
“We process around 200-250 inmates a day which equals to 80,000 or 90,000 people a year,” MCSO Sergeant Joaquin Enriquez said.
Every inmate who is booked and will not be immediately released goes through a process called “classification” to determine what level of security risk they pose and how much supervision and security they require.
“We don’t have the luxury to put everybody by themself,” Enriquez said. “Studies show that you want to house people of the same classification together to reduce a lot of issues, like suicide prevention and things like that.”
Enriquez told ABC15 that classifications range from minimum, medium, maximum, and maximum close custody. The maximum close custody inmates are housed in a cell by themselves and only receive one hour outside their cell a day.
Court records show Toure was considered “a danger to the public.” He had been arrested on allegations of domestic violence, including allegedly throwing his infant child. Glendale police provided a video from September 2024 of Toure allegedly kicking a police officer. The Glendale police report said Toure was placed in an isolation cell in Glendale and then immediately taken to “the county jail without other inmates due to his violent behavior.”
Sgt. Enriquez and MCSO say Toure was kept in a maximum close custody cell by himself after the 2023 attack on his cellmate, but classification reevaluations happen monthly.
“Every 30, 60, and 90 days, we do a reevaluation of your behavior,” Enriquez said. “The previous incident he had when he assaulted a previous inmate, that may have brought him up [to maximum close custody], but he went eight months with no bad institutional behavior, so then he got reclassified.”
MCSO described that December 2023 aggravated assault charge Toure pled guilty to as a “fight."
“It was an assault, it was a fight. He was accused of trying to strangle his cellmate. Now that went in as an assault,” Enriquez said. “That was evaluated. He spent eight months obviously with not a cellmate in a different location and when he got reevaluated, that’s when he got put to maximum security.”
That reclassification landed him in a shared maximum security cell with Duran.
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“I can tell you both inmates were deemed maximum security and they could’ve gone through a series of evaluations,” Enriquez said.
Part of the concern for Duran is Toure’s alleged claim that the attack lasted for an hour when detention officers are supposed to make security check rounds roughly every half hour.
“If what Toure tells investigators is right and this lasts an hour? Would that mean something didn’t work the way it was supposed to,” ABC15’s Ford Hatchett asked Enriquez.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. It is our understanding that the two got into a physical altercation earlier in the day and then it stopped,” Enriquez said. “And maybe when we did the check everything appeared to be fine and then somehow the physical confrontation continued again.”
Enriquez said the incident is still under review, but so far they have not determined any changes in policy that are needed.
“I know hindsight is 20/20 but we follow the process. We follow the system that’s been in place for years and years and years,” Enriquez said of the process he said is a national jail standard. “Everything was done according to our protocol that nine out of 10 times works."
Thelma believes her son deserved better.
“They failed my son. They failed to protect my son. They failed my son’s rights as a human being. They failed him,” Thelma said.
In a January interview with ABC15, Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, who was elected in 2024 and took over the office in 2025, said jail deaths were a problem in the county.
“The Sheriff is responsible for every one of those inmate deaths,” Sheridan said. “It’s our job to run a safe jail system, not only for our officers that work there but for the inmates themselves.”
Through a records request with the county, ABC15 learned Maricopa County has paid out $14,688,941.46 in 135 jail death settlements in the last 10 years.
ABC15 has requested videos and jail records in relation to this case to better determine what exactly happened and will report any new details released.
