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Mass. DOC Sgt. Accused Of Making Threatening Call

SPRINGFIELD (AP) -- A sergeant with the state Department of Correction faced allegations he made a threatening call to a hospital where an escaped convict accused of shooting four people, including two police officers, was being treated.

The May 4 call to Baystate Medical Center was traced to Sgt. Adam Demoranville's cell phone, Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni said Tuesday.

According to the prosecutor, an employee who answered the phone at a nurse's station in the hospital's intensive care unit told investigators the male caller said: "I am going to (expletive) kill you." The woman said there were three earlier calls that evening in which she heard only loud music and people talking in the background.

Tamik Kirkland, 24, was being treated in the ICU for serious gunshot wounds sustained in a shootout with police.

Kirkland was accused of escaping from a state prison in Shirley in the early morning hours of April 25 with plans to avenge the wounding of his mother during a shooting in Springfield a few days earlier. Police allege Kirkland returned to Springfield, killed a man, shot two police officers and injured a fourth person on April 30.

The officers were protected by their bullet-proof vests and did not sustain serious injuries.

Mastroianni said in a statement that Demoranville was not part of a detail of correction officers and Springfield police who were guarding the unit where Kirkland was being treated.

The investigation found that Demoranville was watching a Boston Bruins game at a social gathering and got the phone number for the nurse's station off paperwork that another correction employee was carrying, the district attorney said. The second employee had not been aware that the paperwork was visible.

The origin of the three other calls could not be determined, Mastroianni said.

The prosecutor planned to seek criminal complaints against Demoranville for threatening to commit a crime and disorderly conduct.

Mastroianni had previously said that investigators were looking into the possibility the calls were made by DOC employees who believed that by threatening Kirkland's life, it would ensure them overtime pay because the department would have to guard him 24 hours a day in the hospital.

But the district attorney on Tuesday discounted that as a likely motive.

"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," Mastroianni told the Republican newspaper of Springfield.

Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, told the newspaper the incident was a "personnel
matter" and that she could not comment further.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

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