Demoranville, an employee at the Shirley minimum security state prison where Kirkland was held when he escaped, was released on his own recognizance.
SPRINGFIELD – A sergeant with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections pleaded not guilty Wednesday in District Court to two criminal charges in connection with a threat called in to a nurses’ station outside murder suspect Tamik Kirkland’s hospital room in May.
Adam Demoranville, an employee at the Shirley minimum security state prison where Kirkland was held when he escaped in April, was released on his own recognizance and ordered to stay away from Baystate Medical Center and have no contact with the hospital. He had been summonsed to the arraignment.
He pleaded not guilty to threatening to commit a crime and disorderly conduct. A pre-trial conference is set for Sept. 15.
He has been suspended with pay since an investigation was launched, a spokeswoman for the state corrections department said.
Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni previously said charges were pursued 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 said, “I’m going to (expletive) kill you.”
The call was traced back to Demoranville’s cell phone, Mastroianni said, and Demoranville admitted placing the call but denied making any threat.
Kirkland broke out of prison in April after hearing his mother had been shot. He is charged 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.
He has pleaded not guilty in District Court.
Kirkland, 25, 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.