New London man charged with murdering his prison cellmate

A New London man serving a nine-year prison sentence for an attack on three correction officers in Montville in 2020 was charged with murder Friday after state police say he strangled a fellow inmate at the MacDougall Correctional Center in Suffield.

Kyle McKinnon, 31, was charged with murder and first-degree strangulation in connection with the Dec. 12, 2024, death of his cellmate, 26-year-old Kenne Montaner-Buscampell, whose body McKinnon carried and dropped onto a table in a common area of the prison before confessing, police said.

McKinnon was arraigned Friday in Hartford Superior Court. His bond was set at $1 million and he is due to appear again on March 12 in Hartford Superior Court.

The motive for the killing is unclear but state police said McKinnon confessed not long after he was confronted, claiming he was being lied to and manipulated but did not elaborate.

I choked him out,” McKinnon told police, according to the affidavit for his arrest warrant. “I strangled him and tried to kill him. That’s all there is. I had thoughts in my head, I don’t really know what the hell was going on.”

Police said McKinnon admitted choking the victim while he was still asleep in the bottom bunk.

“I feel bad enough as it is because honestly he was a good dude, but I can tell when somebody’s lying,” McKinnon told police, according to the warrant.

McKinnon also told police that he had repeatedly told correctional staff not to place him in a cell with another person though the reason is redacted in the police report. One witness from the prison told police that McKinnon was a loner, would not interact with other inmates, and “often walked around quietly, seemingly in a trance.

McKinnon and Elijah Hamlin were arrested on April 10, 2020, after police said they attacked three correction officers in an attempt to escape from their cell at Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center in Montville. One of the three correction officers was a woman who police said was viciously kicked while on the ground. At the time of the attack, McKinnon was being held at Corrigan on the charge of attempted murder in the stabbing of his former girlfriend.

McKinnon pleaded guilty to the charge of first-degree assault, court records show, and in 2022 was sentenced to nine years in prison and five years of probation.

g.smith@theday.com