Teshome Abate was an immigrant serving a 20-year sentence for 2nd degree murder. He died at age 38 at St. Mary's Hospital in Tucson owing to complications related to self-starvation. He had staged several hunger strikes during 1997 in protest of the prison system's refusal to feed him an Ethiopian Orthodox diet. He was hospitalized on Sept. 3 under a court order and he had agreed to take small amounts of food and liquids. In December, the 5' 10" man had ripped out his feeding tube; his weight had fallen from 149 to about 75 pounds. He could not be force fed because he was deemed competent. The state spent about $90,000 on his medical care. Ethiopian Orthodox abstain from dairy products during lent and 30 days before Ethiopian Christmas, which is celebrated on January 7. During those time, followers eat vegetables, fruit, and meat except pork. The prison spokeswoman said he was offered a choice of regular, kosher, or vegetarian diets, but he was not satisfied.
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The Prescott Courier - April 3, 1988, page 1C
He was granted political asylum in the United States in 1984. He plead guilty September 25, 1987, to second-degree murder, after being charged with first-degree murder. He was sentenced in Maricopa County Superior Court, Friday, April 1, 1988 for the May 17, 1987 second-degree murder of Catherine McIntosh, 35. Abate had rented a room in McIntosh's Gilbert home, for less than a month when he shot and killed her while he was a student at Arizona State University.

He told police the night of the murder that McIntosh had asked him to move, which had angered him, and he went and loaded a handgun, went to McIntosh's bedroom and shot her four times.

At the time of the murder he was on probation, after being convicted in Phoenix City Court for assaulting a woman in August of 1986.
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