A motion filed in court records shows the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow expressed concerns for Smith’s safety.
Trevin Smith at his arraignment in Springfield District Court on Tuesday.Updates a story posted Tuesday at 10:22 a.m.
SPRINGFIELD – Trevin T. Smith called his girlfriend and told her to wait with her car outside a house near the corner of Burr and Cambridge streets. He said to make sure she had nothing in her trunk.
When she arrived, a man she knew as “Maniac” came running from the house, jumped in the trunk and yelled, “Close the trunk. Close the trunk.”
And, as police swarmed into the Mason Square neighborhood on April 30, the 31-year-old woman – with her 12-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old child she was baby-sitting in the back seat – found herself in the middle of the gun battle between an escaped convict and law enforcement officers who had been searching for him.
New details of the shoot-out between Tamik J. Kirkland, 24, and police are included in a series of police reports filed this week in District Court. They include a statement given to police by the woman who apparently was unwittingly summonsed by Smith to provide a get-away car for Kirkland. In it, she detailed how Smith contacted her asking for a ride and how Kirkland, identified by her to police as “Maniac,” was preparing to flee.
Kirkland was on the run from a shooting a short time earlier at a barbershop on State Street where one man was killed and a second injured, police said.
The woman who was driving the would-by getaway car will face no charges, but Smith on Tuesday was arraigned on a charge of being an accessory after the fact to the murder of Sheldon Innocent, of Wilbraham. Innocent was one of the two men who were shot at Bill Brown’s House of Beauty, 945 State St.
It was in a driveway outside 46 Burr St. where the woman was instructed by her boyfriend to wait that the confrontation with police occurred. Kirkland is accused of opening fire as he leapt from trunk of the woman’s car, wounding two officers before being shot himself in the driveway of the home.
At his arraignment, Smith, 30, of 79 Penrose St. , denied a charge which accuses him of aiding Kirkland, who had escaped from a minimum security state prison in Shirley on April 24.
“I am sitting here wondering why Trevin would put his baby, his little twin in danger. My daughter was in the back seat playing with the baby the whole time. I don’t see how he did this to us,” she told investigators in the statement given about three hours after the shootings.
Smith, who fled to Brooklyn, N.Y., after the incident and turned himself in on May 4, is being held in lieu of $500,000 cash bail set by Judge William Boyle. His attorney, Alexander Z. Nappan, asked for a June 2 hearing to seek a reduction in the bail.
The arraignment, with Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni as prosecutor, took place under heightened security with about a dozen court officers posted in the courtroom.
Smith will be held at the Hampshire County Jail in Northampton; a motion filed in the court records shows that the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow expressed concerns for Smith’s safety.
Emily (Innocent) Goines, Sheldon Innocent’s mother, was present for the arraignment. Goines said her life has been difficult since her son’s death and she is seeking counseling to help her deal with the trauma.
Goines also said she intends to attend every court appearance of the defendants “until the end” of their prosecution. Police have said Innocent was an innocent victim.
It appears the second man who was shot at the barbershop, may have been known to Kirkland. In a report which requested a warrant be issued for Smith’s arrest, the second shooting victim, identified as Darrell King, told investigators he “had seen the shooter on a prior occasion.”
The report by detective Anthony Pioggia is among those on file with Smith’s case.
Kirkland, who is charged with murder, attempted murder, home invasion, assault and weapons counts, still awaits arraignment. Shot six times by police, Kirkland was recently transferred from Baystate Medical Center to an unnamed Department of Corrections facility, where he continues to recover.
Kirkland’s transfer came after several death threats were telephoned to Baystate while he was being treated there; Mastroianni’s office is conducting a probe of those threats, which are reported to have involved calls made by some members of the state Department of Corrections team.
Kirkland’s escape has also been the subject of a probe by the state corrections agency. A preliminary investigation showed Kirkland fled the prison in Shirley a day after his mother was injured in a shooting on Ringgold Street.
Smith’s girlfriend’s statement to authorities detailed how she watched the events unfold in the shoot-out with police. She had been on the telephone with Smith when the police approached her car and ordered her out, leaving the children still in the back seat.
“I got out of the car, and I said, He is in the trunk. They surrounded the trunk. The cops were just a few feet from the trunk. Next thing you know, the trunk was never locked. Maniac just lifted it up,” she said. “Maniac started shooting and the cops started shooting back at him.”