No foul play in death of Indian Posse co-founder Richard Daniel Wolfe

Corrections Canada says it has found no evidence of foul play in the death of Indian Posse co-founderRichard Daniel Wolfe.

Wolfe, 40, was found in the exercise yard at Saskatchewan Penitentiary on Friday in need of medical attention. He was taken to hospital where he laterdied. TheCorrectional Service of Canada conducted an investigation into the death and on Monday ruled outfoul play.

Wolfe was known to have serious health problems, includingoperations followingtwo heart attacks. Wolfewas serving a five-year sentence since January for an attack on a FortQu'Appelle couple in 2014.

Six years ago at the same prisonRichard's younger brother Daniel died during a melee.

CBC News spoke to an Ontario gang expert, Mark Totten, professor at Humber College near Toronto, who said the Saskatchewan Penitentiary is a very volatile environment.

• Richard Daniel Wolfe, Indian Posse founder, dies a prisoner

"Sask Pen is a very violent place," Totten said in an interview, adding any number of things could have happened inside the prison that could have resulted in death.

"It could be something as simple as this guy looked at somebody the wrong way in Sask Pen and he ended up paying for it with his life. Or, it could be that maybe he ripped off another gang member, or maybe one of his underlings on the street ripped off somebody. It could be for a whole variety of reasons that he ended up dead."

The two brothers were among seven founding members of the Indian Posse gang. It was noted that Richard eventually disassociated himself from the gang in 2000.

Troubled past

According to a 1994 article by the Winnipeg Free Press, the brothers founded the Indian Posse gang in 1989in the basement of their mother's Winnipeg home. Richard would have been about 13 at the time and had just started on what would become a lifetime of interactions with the criminal justice system.

Court documents showWolfehad a string of breaking and enteringconvictions as a youth and spent a lot of his teen years in and out of youth custody facilities.

"He was raised in an environment where substance abuse and domestic violence was prevalent," a sentencing judge wrote in January of this year. "Richard was repeatedly exposed to violence which occurred during his parents' house parties. He was sexually abused at the age of seven, once by a stranger and twice by a neighbour. The episodes of sexual abuse left Richard confused, ashamed and full of hate."

When Wolfe was sentenced for the 2014 sexual assault, the court noted he had a lengthy criminal record which included many violent incidents. The court also took note of his deeply troubled upbringing.

"Richard and his younger brother, Daniel, were unsupervised as children," the judge said in the sentencing decision.

"They lived in poverty with little to eat. Richard and Daniel soon learned to steal vegetables from gardens and food from dumpsters simply to survive. Richard first began using drugs at the age of 10 or 11, and by the age of 11, he had begun consuming alcohol."

Indian Posse a notorious gang

The Indian Posse gang has been linked with crime and violence in and out of prison walls for many years.

Officials said an 18-hour riot at the Headingley Correctional Centre in Manitoba in 1996 grew out of a feud between the Indian Posse and a rival gang, the Manitoba Warriors. Eight guards and 31 prisoners were beaten.

In a 2005 report, Alberta's Criminal Intelligence Servicesaid the Indian Posse street gang had built drug networks south of Edmonton and in Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie and Peace regions. Residents of the Samson Cree Nation in Alberta also blamed a rivalry between the Indian Posse and other gangs for a crime wave that included the shooting of 23-month-old Asia Saddleback, who survived after she was hit by a stray bullet while in a home in 2008.

In 2010, RCMP included the Indian Posse among a list of native gangs, includingthe Native Syndicate and Manitoba Warriors, stating they had spread across the West and were even in rural areas of B.C., northern Ontario and the Far North.