Demoranville will be arraigned in Springfield District Court on July 27.
SPRINGFIELD - A sergeant with the state Department of Corrections faces two criminal charges in Springfield District Court in connection with allegedly prank-calling a nurses' station outside accused cop shooter Tamik Kirkland's hospital room in May.
Adam Demoranville, an employee at the Shirley minimum security state prison where Kirkland was finishing out a sentence when he escaped in April, was charged after an evidentiary threshold hearing with threatening to commit a crime and disorderly conduct, according to court records.
Hampden County District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni previously said state police were pursuing charges against Demoranville after an anonymous phone call was placed to a nurses' station in the intensive care unit at Baystate Medical Center during which the caller allegedly said "I'm going to (expletive) kill you."
The call was traced back to Demoranville's cell phone, Mastroianni said, adding that Demoranville admitted placing the call but denied making any threat. The district attorney said the motive for the call appeared to be stupidity, rather than a hoax designed to boost department of corrections overtime pay, a theory that was originally batted around by law enforcement officials.
Kirkland broke out of prison in April after hearing his mother on April 30 had been shot and proceeded to go on a vengeful crime spree that culminated with the fatal shooting of a barbershop customer at Bill Brown's House of Beauty on State Street and the nonfatal shootings of a barber and two police officers, according to investigators.
Kirkland was wounded in a shoot-out with police and was recovering at Baystate, where a department of corrections security detail had been put in place. Demoranville was not assigned to that detail, however, Mastroianni said.
Demoranville will be arraigned on the two misdemeanor charges on July 27. He has been suspended without pay since an investigation into the phone call was launched, a spokeswoman for the state corrections department said.