Mark Edward Allen

Mark Edward Allen was thirteen years old when Monrovia, California, police arrested him on suspicion of shoplifting a leather coat on November 16, 1971. Police booked Allen at 5:11 p.m. and confined him in cell M4 at the Monrovia Police Station. Officers reported finding him unresponsive at about 6:25 p.m. and said he had strangled himself with his pants. A Black police cadet said Allen had arrived shirtless, highly agitated and scratched across his body. Allen was pronounced dead at Arcadia Methodist Hospital. He spent a little more than one hour in the station before he was found unresponsive.