Milwaukee prosecutors: Video shows inmate’s water turned off

“They lock him up and then they never let him out until they take him out dead, correct?” Assistant District Attorney Kurt Bentley asked Gold, who agreed.

Thomas’ family has said he was having a mental breakdown when police arrested him April 14, 2016, for shooting a man in front of his parents’ house and later firing a gun inside a casino.

Gold said Evans “was very surprised” to hear what the video showed. But when Evans took the stand later Tuesday she denied Gold ever told her about the water being shut off and said it was several months before she became aware that dehydration was the cause of Thomas’ death. She denied withholding evidence, but Bentley said Evans failed to direct staff to preserve the entire video and did not mention it to police until almost a year later.

“Why were you withholding this crucial evidence from the Milwaukee Police Department?” Bentley asked.

“I was not, sir,” she said.

Police detectives asked her in a questionnaire they sent her last summer if there was any documentation showing whether the water was turned off the whole time or if it was turned on intermittently. The document Evans signed off on answered that “there is no documentation indicating this.” However, prosecutors say Evans was aware of the tape and what it showed by then.

Bentley said Evans lied to police detectives last month when she told them it wasn’t until months later that she asked Gold to review the surveillance video to check for the water being shut off. Footage is routinely erased after a certain time and by then only the latter half of the video was available.

But Bentley said Evans changed her story and said she directed the review of the video within days after she learned a forensics unit was going to examine the computer server.

The first part of the video has not been recovered.

A jury hearing the evidence will recommend whether prosecutors should file charges, but the decision will be up to the District Attorney’s Office.

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Find Ivan Moreno on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Ivanjourno

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Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, http://www.jsonline.com

Ivan Moreno, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Milwaukee prosecutors: Video shows inmate’s water turned off

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