A man convicted in the 1998 murder of a 9-year-old boy was found hanging in his death row prison cell on Thursday in an apparent suicide at a Northern California prison, officials said.

Brandon Wilson, 33, was pronounced dead at San Quentin State Prison, according to Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Wilson did not share his cell with another inmate. Authorities did not immediately release details on how he might have hung himself.

A San Diego County jury sentenced Wilson to death in 1999 for murdering 9-year-old Matthew Cecchi the previous year in a park restroom in Oceanside, California.

Wilson is the 19th death row inmate to commit suicide since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978, according to the Department of Corrections.

That means more condemned inmates have died of suicide than the 13 prisoners who have been executed in the state since 1978, prison officials said. There are 719 inmates on death row in California.

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