WAPO: Other Prisoner In Van Says Freddie Gray Tried To Injure Himself

If this report is true the story of Freddie Gray is about to be turned on its heels.  According to the Washington Post Freddie Gray deliberately tried to injure himself while riding in a police van after his arrest and on the way to the police station.

A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at a police station on April 12. The 25-year-old had suffered a spinal injury and died a week later, touching off waves of protests across Baltimore, capped by a riot Monday in which hundreds of angry residents torched buildings, looted stores and pelted police officers with rocks.

I am not sure which is worse.  If the WAPO story isn’t true it may mean that members of the Baltimore police force dishonored their badges and caused harm to a prisoner.  If the WAPO story turns out to be true it may end up causing more violence.  The minority community will have a hard time accepting a self inflicted injury, the same way they still don’t accept the grand jury results in the Michael Brown case. When you add the fact that President Obama had for all intents and purposes already convicted the Baltimore police, whatever the truth is, it will be a difficult truth to swallow.