Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni said Department of Corrections employee Adam Demoranville allegedly made a threatening call to an employee at a nurse's station.
Tamik KirklandSPRINGFIELD - Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni said police will seek criminal charges against a sergeant in the state Department of Corrections, alleging he made a threatening phone call to an employee at a nurses’ station outside the intensive care unit where accused cop shooter Tamik Kirkland was recuperating on May 4.
Kirkland, 29, an escapee from Shirley state prison, went on a shooting spree in downtown Springfield on April 30, killing a patron at a barber shop and wounding a barber before opening fire on two officers who got in the way of him escaping the scene in a trunk of a car on Cambridge Street.
The officers were spared serious injuries by their bullet-proof vests. Kirkland suffered several gunshot wounds and underwent surgery at Baystate Medical Center that afternoon. In the days following the shootings, an employee at the nurses’ station outside Kirkland’s heavily-guarded room received a call from an anonymous caller who said: "I’m going to (expletive) kill you," rattling the woman and sparking an investigation into the call.
Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, said she could not comment beyond saying, "This is a personnel matter. A sergeant was suspended with pay until indicted."
As the security detail had transitioned from local and state police to state corrections officers, rampant rumors went around about state workers making the call as a hoax to trigger more overtime shifts.
But Mastroianni said is was more likely idiocy than a plot to boost overtime that prompted the call, which was traced back to the cell phone of Adam Demoranville, 39, a corrections employee from the eastern part of the state.
"I heard the overtime motive. We looked into it. But when you start looking at this to determine motive it looks more like a prank or idiotic, senseless thing," he said.
Mastroianni added that Demoranville was not scheduled to work the security detail. He admitting placing the call to the nurses’ station but denied making any threatening statements.
"It looked like the guy was making the call from some kind of gathering where people were watching a Bruins game," Mastroianni said, adding that the same hospital employee received other, similar calls with ambient noise and swearing in the background. Investigators were unable to trace those, however.
No other corrections employees were implicated in the alleged phone caper, Mastroianni said.
Demoranville will be required to appear at a hearing in Springfield District Court later this month. That hearing will not be open to the public. The charges sought include disorderly conduct and threatening to commit a crime.
Kirkland is scheduled to be arraigned in connection with the April 30 shootings on Thursday in Springfield District Court. He is alleged to have jumped out a window in the middle of the night, traveling to this city to avenge the nonfatal shooting of his mother days earlier.
Staff writer Dan Ring contributed to this report.