Kevin G. Johns Jr., 22, was indicted yesterday by a Baltimore County grand jury on a single count of first-degree murder in the death of Philip E. Parker Jr., 20, on Feb. 2, the state’s attorney’s office announced.
Stephen Bailey, the deputy state’s attorney, said last night that the office would seek “a sentence of death.”
Parker and Johns were among 35 shackled inmates and five officers on a prison bus that left a Hagerstown prison early Feb. 2, bound for the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center – known as Supermax – in Baltimore.
Parker had been serving a 3 1/2 -year sentence for unarmed robbery.
In letters to his family, an inmate witness reported that a second inmate helped hold down Parker while another man choked him with his restraint chains.
But S. Ann Brobst, an assistant state’s attorney handling the case, said there was not “sufficient evidence to indicate anybody else was involved.”
Three are fired
As a result of Parker’s death, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which oversees the Division of Correction, fired three officers and disciplined two others.
DOC officials said they had conducted a review of inmate transportation policies and procedures and had made several changes.
Based on the division’s own transportation policies, which The Sun obtained, Johns should have been identified as a threat and kept apart from other inmates in a segregated cage at the front of the bus.
But prison officials essentially blamed the officers for not doing their jobs.
In their search for answers to their son’s death, Parker’s parents and their attorney met with prosecutors yesterday at the county state’s attorney’s offices.
Their attorney, Michael A. Mastracci, said that prosecutors were “very sympathetic and supportive” over the loss of their son, but he declined to comment on the substance of the meeting.
The Parker homicide ended up in the hands of Baltimore County prosecutors because prison investigators determined that he was likely killed during the period that the bus drove through the county.
Attorneys for Johns, who has been represented by public defenders, could not be reached for comment late yesterday.
The day before Parker was killed, he and other inmates had been taken to Hagerstown to testify at a hearing for Johns, who was being sentenced for killing his 16-year-old cellmate. Parker and others testified that Johns needed psychiatric treatment.
At the hearing, Johns vowed that he would kill again in prison if given the chance; he ultimately received a life sentence for killing his cellmate. In 2003, he had been sentenced to 35 years for killing his uncle.
Almost immediately after Parker’s death, Johns emerged as the main suspect, according to a statement from the Department of Public Safety yesterday.
Broken lights
One of the fired officers, Robert R. Scott, said in an interview that he saw Johns move from his seat during the bus trip to Parker. He said he reported the activity to officers at the front of the bus. They turned on interior lights, but several were broken, affording only dim lighting, Scott said,
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Scott’s termination notice said that from his position in the rear cage of the bus, he was “at most, 6-7 feet” from where Parker was assaulted.
When the bus arrived at Supermax, officers called inmates off the bus by name. Johns emerged with a bloody shirt, and the officers held him aside, according to Scott’s termination notice.
“When Parker failed to appear, Scott boarded the bus and went to the rear, where he found Parker, apparently unconscious and slumped between” two rows of seats, the notice states.
Officers removed Parker from the bus and paramedics were called, but Parker was pronounced dead at the scene, the notice said.
Ed Rothstein, a board member with the Maryland Association of Correctional and Security Employees, said that officers on the bus were not told of Johns’ threats in court and violent history. If they had been told, he said, Johns could have been segregated from the other prisoners.
“It’s really sad that the Department of Public Safety won’t take responsibility for what’s happened here,” Rothstein said.
Sun staff writer Greg Garland contributed to this article.
<!– ART CREDITAMY DAVIS : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTPhilip E. Parker Sr. and Melissa Rodriguez, parents of slain inmate Philip E. Parker Jr., arrive at the courthouse in Towson to meet with prosecutors about the killing of their son.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDIT
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTKevin G. Johns was indicted on a count of first-degree murder.
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