Читать книгу Guilty When Black - Carol Mersch - Страница 14

8

Brick by brick

MCAMIS called Tulsa Fire Department Investigator Mark Milstead to testify. Milstead, a seasoned Fire Marshall with impressive credentials, gave a meandering, detailed, and technical description of the heat levels and path of the fire from its ignition source on the stove burner through the apartment from the ceiling to the floor. However, when McAmis asked if Miashah’s statement that she left the stove on low heat was consistent with his own findings, Milstead was unable to give a definitive answer.

“The stove hood had extensive oxidation, which means extensive fire damage to that hood element… We—we are currently going to try to do some investigation and more data to get more of a finite detail… So with that information, you know, it would take, obviously, a lot longer with a low versus a higher temperature to reach that.”

He went on to add, “In the hallway, I located a smoke detector that was battery powered that was on the floor between the two bedrooms… It did have a battery located inside it with the numbers 6 of 15, assuming that’s the expiration date on the battery. But it was still intact, plugged in; however, it wasn’t operational, obviously, at that point.”

McAmis asked him to continue. “Okay. Keeping going.”

Milstead: I also observed the two bedrooms. We had extensive smoke staining throughout the bedrooms. And smoke staining is just when you have smoke deposit on the wall. Generally, that will start at the upper levels and work its way down. We had smoke staining from floor to ceiling, meaning that, you know, we had a heavy amount of smoke inside that apartment in both bedrooms.

McAmis: And you were mentioning the two bedrooms. And you said you had two civilian victims. Where were the two civilian victims located?

Milstead: Yes. Based on the fire firefighters’ statements to myself, one, the older child, was located in the southwest bedroom. She was found in a prone position, which is on her stomach, underneath—partially underneath the bed. She also was covered partially with covers and a pillow. And the younger child was found in the northwest bedroom. And she was located inside the closet doorway of that bedroom, on her back.

McAmis: Okay. And, sir, was it the youngest child in the northwest bedroom that sustained the most injuries?

Milstead: Yes, the child in the northwest bedroom had extensive burn injuries on and about her body… We had fire damage at the upper level, but not at the lower levels. The older child in the southwest bedroom, there were no obvious visible injuries noted on her.

Milstead’s testimony that a smoke detector was found in the hallway corroborated Tina Long’s statement that she saw the maintenance worker run across the second-floor walkway and throw something into Miashah’s doorway. “I know for a fact that’s what Eddy threw into her apartment,” Tina said. “It was identical to the one in my apartment.”49

Allen Gorenflo, the last electrician to work in unit #716, knew the layout of the apartment and made a detailed drawing showing that a smoke detector thrown through the front door would have bounced off the inside hall wall of the apartment and landed on the floor between the two bedrooms, precisely where Fire Investigator Milstead said it was found. Gorenflo remembered that the original smoke detector in Miashah’s unit was connected to an overloaded circuit that caused a bedroom ceiling fan to malfunction. To relieve the load, the breaker, which was electric and not battery-operated, had been disconnected.50

Section 8 housing rules mandate that a functioning smoke detector be installed in each apartment. But Keahmiee and Miashah said there was no smoke detector in the apartment when they moved in. Tina and neighbors who ran to help said they heard no smoke alarms going off.

Milstead, however, was not privy to the situation in the apartment before the fire. His post-fire observations and applied data techniques were derived from his Tulsa Fire Department training and experience. And his knowledge of the children’s location and injuries was obtained from a second-hand account, not his own, an account which Chrisandria would later find disturbingly inaccurate.

Milstead was excused from the stand and McAmis called Police Detective Jeanne Mackenzie to the stand. Mackenzie was one of the two detectives who interrogated Miashah immediately after the fire. An attractive blonde who spoke with a slight lisp, she was a nine-year veteran of the Tulsa Police Department and had spent three-and-a-half years as a child crisis detective.

McAmis: “When did your interview take place in relation to when the fire had taken place?”

Mackenzie: “It was the day after the fire.”

McAmis: “When you spoke to the Defendant, did you ask what she had been doing before the time of the fire?”

Mackenzie: “Yes. She said that she was cooking on the stove, that she left it on low, that she left the apartment to throw out—to take out the trash.”

But when asked again only seconds later, however, Mackenzie contradicted herself, saying Miashah told her she left the stove on “6”—six levels higher than low.

“Did she tell you whether or not she had locked the door to the apartment?” McAmis asked.

“Yes, she said she locked the door because the oldest one would let the youngest one out.”

“Did you ask her if she had done anything else outside the apartment other than go to take out the trash?

“Yes, she said that she talked to a gentleman for two or three minutes.”

“Okay. Did she tell you, at that point in time she left the apartment, what the two girls were doing?”

“They were in her bedroom, watching TV.”

“Did you talk to her about time frames and how long she had been gone?”

“Yes, I asked her when she went to talk to the gentleman, if maybe she was gone more than eight minutes. And her response was ‘I hope not.’”

“Did you ask the defendant whether or not she had gone to purchase marijuana from any individual?”

“Yes, I did. She said that was not true.”

“Did she make any statements to you about a pop machine?”

“Yes, towards the end of the interview, I asked her about the drink she had in her hand [in the surveillance photo]. She stated that the plan was to go to the dumpster, go to the pop machine, and go back to the apartment. And that’s when—she called him Bro—waved her over and she went down to his apartment to talk to him.”

“Did she tell you anything else at the fire scene?”

“She stated that she was patted down by somebody from the fire.”

Detective Mackenzie’s confusion about the heat levels on the stove only added to Chrisandria’s belief that the police, as well as the Fire Department, hadn’t even a basic understanding of the case they were investigating, and were floundering in preconceived assumptions and shared narratives among the police and fire investigators. She said, “I mean, the main thing is, there is no ‘6’ on the dial! So, I don’t know where they get ‘6’ from.”

The stove was now gone, likely impounded somewhere in the catacombs of the Fire Department warehouse or deposited in a rusting city trash heap. Retrieving the knobs from the burners to verify heat level markings would be nearly impossible.

After the witness testimonies were concluded, Judge Youll grappled with McAmis’ contention that leaving a child unattended for eight minutes would constitute neglect.

“What it gets down to is: Is this a case, then, of child neglect? Reviewing what the definition of child neglect… under which definition of neglect is the State proceeding? Do we know?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” McAmis responded. “Under the failure to provide either adequate shelter and/or adequate supervision by leaving these two, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, approximately, alone and unsupervised in an apartment that then caught fire and consumed both of them.”

“I mean, is the neglect because it actually caught fire?” the judge persisted. “Are you saying that—at least based on the testimony, the time frame is eight minutes—the fact that the children were left unsupervised for eight minutes is neglect?”

“Yes, Your Honor… Whether or not the time frame really is eight minutes, Your Honor, or whether or not—”

She didn’t get any further.

“That’s all we have today, right, is eight minutes?” the judge queried. “Eight minutes being unsupervised is sufficient for child neglect?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So the State could file: one, that the child was left unsupervised for a minute, and something happened and then that is sufficient, that would be the State’s position?”

At this point, McAmis fell back on the seasoned prosecutor technique of throwing spaghetti at the wall by reciting a vivid cinematic description of events.

“I think it’s always fact-dependent, Your Honor. It would determine whether in what condition you left the children. In other words, if you were cooking in grease that had been from the night before and you had it turned it up to ‘6’ and you left and dead-bolted the door and then went and talked to different people in the apartment complex, for whatever length of time—I do believe that it’s always fact-dependent, Your Honor.”

Judge Youll nodded to Miashah’s attorney, “Ms. Holmes?”

“Your Honor, I would disagree with the State’s position. In order to even use child neglect as a predicate for this offense, they’d have to show that the actions taken by Miss Moses were imminently dangerous and also show a depraved mind. Stepping out to empty the trash, we all do it on a daily basis. We don’t know whether the fire started two minutes before—two minutes after she walked out or three minutes or five minutes after she walked out. She was conducting an activity that’s done in the regular course of everyday business. And I would argue that it’s not imminently dangerous to lower the fire on a stove and take the trash out. We go about, again, we go about our business in our homes every day.

Holmes continued: “But my point is, Your Honor, I don’t think she carried out any activity that could be considered as negligent. She actually took steps to make sure that nothing happened. She lowered the heat on the stove. She told the detective that she locked the door because sometimes the older child would let the younger child out. It’s a horrible situation but in trying to prevent one problem from occurring, this fire cropped up. I think Miss Moses showed that she was very responsible and not negligent.”

At this juncture, the judge posed another query to McAmis.

“Would it have been neglect had a fire not occurred?”

“It could have been, Your Honor. Depending on the fact circumstances, yes, to leave two children…” she said, doggedly diverting attention away from the fact that Miashah was gone for just a few minutes leading up to the horrible outcome. She argued that it didn’t matter how long Miashah was gone, whether it was one minute or eight minutes.

Judge Youll persisted, “No, I understand the facts of this circumstance. What I’m saying, in this particular set of facts, had a fire not occurred?”

McAmis maintained her position.

“I believe it could have been, Your Honor. Again, that would be an issue of fact for a jury.”

Judge Youll reluctantly yielded to the DA’s position. He ordered Miashah held without bond on two counts of second-degree murder and bound over for arraignment by Judge James Caputo in the Criminal Division.

By this time in the hearing, Miashah’s brother Keontae had been ushered out of the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies and told to leave the courthouse. As he made his way through the foyer, he spotted witness Torrance Williams and stopped briefly to thank him for his testimony. Williams said the exchange was respectful and he apologized for the torture his family was going through. “I took one look at the family, and I couldn’t lie,” he said.

Courtroom deputies were keeping an eye on Keontae and suspected that he was threatening the witness. They told him in no uncertain terms that he was to walk away from the courtroom and leave, which he did. As he proceeded toward the third-floor escalators to leave the courthouse, however, deputies abruptly ordered him to stop, pulled his hands behind his back, and began to handcuff him.

Keontae’s aunt, Antonille, was coming up the escalator and was caught off guard. “What’s going on?” she asked Keontae. He reached in his pocket and attempted to toss her his car keys, knowing his car on the ground level would be towed if he was booked. As he was trying to explain, deputies ushered him into to an adjacent stairwell and slammed him against a wall, busting his lower lip. He was then escorted into a holding cell in the courthouse, where the arrest report states “a struggle ensued.” He was thrown to the floor with enough force to crack his cell phone and dislodge a gold earring. When the gold earring landed on the floor, the deputy smashed it with his foot. The arrest report contains details of the alleged events as reported by the sheriff’s deputy:

I walked Keontae Moses down to the holding cells when he started to fight with us we were taking his property from him to place him in a holding cell. At that time took Keontae Moses to the ground to place leg shackles on him to keep him from kicking us. While on the ground waiting to place leg shackles on him to keep him from kicking us… I removed my Taser and placed it between his shoulders and informed Keontae Moses that if he moved or tried to kick that he would be tased.

Keontae said a struggle never happened. He denied that he ever kicked or fought with the deputies and doesn’t recall a Taser stuck in his back or that the deputies really needed one. As evidence of events in the arrest, the report listed “videos found on courthouse cameras located at the Tulsa Courthouse,” but when a written request was made for a copy of the videos, the Sheriff’s Office responded that they could find “no records responsive to the request.”

Chrisandria now had a daughter and a son behind bars.