By Jack Minch
Lowell Sun
SHIRLEY, Mass. — Tamik Kirkland may not have escaped MCI-Shirley sometime after 11:30 p.m. April 24 had a correction officer and his supervisor followed procedures for monitoring inmates, according to a Department of Correction report released yesterday.
Five days after his escape from the minimum-security prison, Kirkland, 24, fatally shot a customer and wounded a barber in a Springfield barber shop before wounding a State Police trooper and a Springfield police officer in a shootout, police allege. He was shot several times by police.
Kirkland made arrangements for the escape using a cellphone smuggled to him by a civilian employee working for a Department of Correction vendor in the prison who had an affair with him, according to the report.
The correction officer has been suspended and is facing an administrative hearing to determine if he should be fired, according to the report. His supervisor faces disciplinary action.
“No changes in DOC policies or procedures are required. If DOC policies and procedures had been adhered to, Inmate Kirkland’s escape ... may have been prevented,” the report says.
“The vendor employee has been barred from all DOC facilities,” the report says. “Should these allegations be sustained, the department will refer the matter to the district attorney’s office for criminal prosecution...”
Somebody apparently made it onto MCI-Shirley grounds to drive Kirkland away, said department spokesman Diane Wiffin.
After the deadly shooting in Springfield on April 30, Kirkland was treated at Bay State Medical Center but has been taken to the maximum-security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Wiffin said.
Kirkland is charged with murdering Sheldon Innocent, 24. He is also charged with armed assault with intent to murder a second man, the police officer and the trooper.
He was a model prisoner before his escape, according to the report.
Kirkland was serving 2 1/2 to four years at MCI-Shirley on weapons and drug charges and would have been eligible for parole early next year.
Kirkland’s escape was triggered by a lust for revenge after his mother was shot April 23, according to the report.
The correction officer reported he saw “living, breathing flesh” in Kirkland’s cell during his overnight rounds April 24, but department officials say the prisoner had fashioned a dummy sometime after 11:30 p.m. and escaped out a third-floor window onto a fire escape around midnight, according to the report.
The ruse was not discovered until about 7 a.m.
“We believe that the officer has violated numerous DOC policies and procedures,” the report said. “He has been detached pending an administrative hearing.
Based on the findings of that administrative hearing, DOC stands ready to terminate.”
The investigation into the escape has not been closed, Wiffin said.
Trevin Smith, 30, of Springfield, has been charged with being an accessory after the shooting.
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