By Alex Rose
Daily Times, Primos, Pa.
CONCORD, Pa. — The family of a man strangled by another inmate at the county jail in Concord in 2022 has entered into a partial settlement with the county and a company that previously provided medical care to inmates.
“The parties reached the settlements after extensive discovery, expert work, fourteen depositions, and mediation,” U.S. District Judge Joshua Wolson wrote in an order approving the terms. “The Delaware County defendants will pay $462,500, and the Wellpath defendants will pay $450,000. Together, the settlements provide substantial recoveries while eliminating the expense and uncertainty of continued litigation against those defendants.”
Michael LaRosa, the attorney representing the son of murder victim Elliot Funkhouser, said claims are still ongoing with respect to the GEO Group, the private, for-profit company that previously oversaw operations at the jail.
“GEO created a culture of exceptionally poor communication and documentation of mentally ill and dangerous inmates, and it’s effectively one hand not knowing what the other was doing, thus leading to an innocent man being put in with a killer,” LaRosa said Thursday.
Attorney Jeffrey Scott, representing the county, did not return a call for comment. Attorneys Suzanne McDonough and Kenneth Rafferty, representing GEO and Wellpath, respectively, declined comment.
Funkhouser, 54, died inside a cell April 22 at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility on the 500 block of Cheyney Road. He was strangled by cellmate Shad Murray Boccella, 25, of Bridgeport, Montgomery County.
Boccella pleaded “guilty but mentally ill” in March 2026 to third-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 to 40 years in a state prison.
Boccella was charged in February 2022 with receiving stolen property, access device fraud, theft, identity theft and false identification to law enforcement, according to online court records.
His attorney, Jason R. Young, filed a motion for a competency evaluation on March 21 of that year, which was granted by Common Pleas Court Judge Margaret Amoroso on March 25 , records show.
But LaRosa said that evaluation did not take place until April 26, four days after Funkhouser’s murder.
According to the civil complaint filed in federal court in March 2024, Boccella had “a history of mental disorders and violent tendencies” and should not have had any cellmates.
“Despite guard requests and warnings not to place Funkhouser in a cell with Boccella, Funkhouser was placed in a cell with Boccella, who strangled Funkhouser to death,” the complaint stated.
How it happened
According to an affidavit of probable cause charging Boccella with Funkhouser’s death written by county Detective Andrew McFarland :
McFarland was called out to the jail at 10:07 a.m. on April 22, 2022, on a report of a suspicious death that may have been caused by another inmate or cellmate. McFarland met with investigators Mario Collucci and George Rhoads, who escorted him to the crime scene.
Fellow county investigators Michelle Deery and Steve Cortese were already there.
Rhoads told McFarland that a “code blue,” meaning a medical emergency or person down, was issued at 9:51 a.m. for unit 10-A-105. Responding officers and medical personnel found the victim unresponsive and began CPR.
Rhoads and fellow investigator Keith Heyward also responded to the unit and found Funkhouser on his back outside the cell. An emergency call was placed to 911 for an ambulance and medics.
Funkhouser, who was being held on charges that included robbery and burglary, was pronounced dead by medics at 10:04 a.m. A post-mortem medical examination later determined the cause of death was homicide by ligature strangulation.
Corrections officers Edward Collins and Fred Pascale provided statements to investigators that they were escorting nurse Serene Eddy to administer medications to inmates in Unit A about 9:48 a.m. that morning.
No one responded when they knocked on cell 10-A-105, so the officers contacted the command center to open the door.
Upon entering, Collins and Pascale found Funkhouser lying face down on the bottom bunk wrapped “very tightly” in sheets and blankets, including his face. Pascale, the first in the door, shook Funkhouser’s foot and pulled the sheets off of him.
Collins said he saw a red mark around Funkhouser’s neck and blood that looked like it had come from his mouth. Pascale described Funkhouser as cold to the touch and unresponsive.
The officers put Funkhouser on the floor of the cell and began administering CPR at Eddy’s direction. Eddy said Boccella was “making looks and banging on the bunk” when they entered the cell. He and Funkhouser were the only two people in the cell.
Eddy described seeing a “noose” type sheet on Funkhouser’s chest, but not around his neck.
She and Pascale also noted the blood on the victim’s mouth and the red mark around his neck. They also both did not think Funkhouser could have wrapped himself in blankets as he appeared when they discovered him. CID investigators collected the sheets from the scene, including one that had blood on it.
Killer’s version
Boccella allegedly told Sgt. Jarred McCafferty that he and Funkhouser had gotten into a physical altercation and “you know what that means.” McCafferty put Boccella in handcuffs and brought him to the block floor, where Boccella allegedly repeated the same statement.
Rhoads and McCafferty took Boccella to the medical unit for an evaluation and to collect a urine sample to determine if he had suffered an overdose. While in the unit around 10:03 a.m. , Rhoads asked Boccella if he was OK.
“Yes, I had to defend myself,” Boccella allegedly responded. “He came at me. I choked him out. I took his shoes. I’m wearing them. I wrapped him up.”
Boccella had made a motion when he said he choked Funkhouser, holding his arms up in front of his face in a manner consistent with using a ligature to strangle someone from behind. Boccella was photographed and did not appear to have any injuries. He was also evaluated by a nurse.
The fatal mistake
According to the civil complaint, Funkhouser was arrested on a parole violation on April 3, 2022 , and placed in a cell with Boccella on the night of April 21 , in violation of practices and policies in place at the time.
The case was somewhat complicated because Funkhouser’s arrest and placement took place roughly at the same time that the county was taking over management of the jail from GEO.
The county only took control April 6 and that transition led to an in-house computer filing system failing to properly flag Boccella as aggressive and requiring isolation, LaRosa said.
There was also a perfect storm of corrections officers unfamiliar with Boccella during Funkhouser’s transfer that contributed to the breakdown in communication, he added.
Funkhouser had been on Block 8 but was being transferred to Block 10, LaRosa said. He had been flagged to be put in with someone of a more mellow disposition because he was a vulnerable inmate.
The problem was that the sergeant on Block 8 didn’t know anything about the inmates on Block 10, so he simply dropped Funkhouser off and left it to officers there to place him.
But the officer working on Block 10 on the night of April 21 was filling in for someone else, so was also not familiar with Boccella, LaRosa said.
Without any documentation on the computer system flagging Boccella as dangerous, LaRosa said there was no way for that officer to know not to pair Funkhouser with him.
“It’s just a bizarre set of circumstances that I can’t even imagine,” LaRosa said. “There was just a complete breakdown of normal policy and procedure, and communication and documentation that should have occurred and should have alerted anyone who came into contact with this guy, but that just … it didn’t exist at all.”
But LaRosa said it was known that Boccella could not even make it through a preliminary arraignment by that point and had demonstrated a lot of other problematic behavior in the short time he was incarcerated at the jail that should have generated numerous reports. Not one had been filed beforehand, he said.
‘Predatory behavior’
He added that Boccella was not properly evaluated until four days after the murder, despite numerous obvious signs that he was a potential threat, the letter from Young seeking a competency evaluation in March and even calls from Boccella’s own mother to the warden in February warning that her son was an unmedicated schizophrenic.
Even on the same day that Funkhouser was transferred, LaRosa said Boccella underwent a newly instituted risk assessment evaluation that found he was a 4 out of 5 for risk of harm to others.
He noted that GEO never had that kind of evaluation in place and it was brand new on the day of the transfer, so that information was just emailed to medical and not received at cell classification until April 22, LaRosa said. The psychiatric evaluation was performed April 26.
“There’s a form for it, for them to assist the cell classification staff with people they interact with that require seclusion, if you will, and that is done after the murder, and it’s the only one on file, and it indicates that he should be housed alone because of ‘predatory behavior,’ ” LsRosa said. “So I mean, all that stuff was after the fact, but it existed before, there’s no question about it. There’s just so many balls dropped, it’s unbelievable.”
Regardless of who was actually in control of the jail at the time, the complaint stated that the defendants including county officials and GEO should have known well ahead of April 21 that Boccella posed a serious threat to other inmates.
“At the time of placing Elliott Funkhouser and Shad Murray Boccella in the same cell, defendants knew or should have known that Shad Murray Boccella was suffering from mental illness and/or disorders and/or had a predilection for violent tendencies toward others including cell-mates,” the complaint stated. “Despite the duty to do so, the defendants took no precautionary actions to ensure that Elliott Funkhouser would not be harmed by his fellow inmate, Shad Murray Boccella .”
LaRosa said Thursday that his client is happy with the partial settlement reached so far and is looking forward to continuing the case against GEO.
The settlement order notes that the distribution includes $52,625 in litigation expenses incurred to date and a $30,000 escrow for future litigation costs, as well as a 40% legal fee for work performed on the suit.
It also dismisses all claims against the Delaware County and Wellpath defendants with prejudice.
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