In the crush to obtain any video surrounding the shooting death of Homicide Detective Sean Suiter last November, the owner of the food mart on the corner of Bennett Place and N. Fremont Ave says officers removed his recording system.
In a handwritten complaint filed in Baltimore City district court, owner Christopher Akpala says police, “forcefully removed” his system when an officer was killed.
He is now requesting full payment for his equipment and further damages of 10 thousand dollars for “endangering his life.”
The legal claim was filed back in January but was recently updated, you can see Akpala had crossed out Kevin Davis' name for Darryl De Sousa.
The Food Mart sits on the opposite corner of the block where Detective Suiter was killed.
Former Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has said some video does exist from that day but that it came from a private security camera somewhere else on the block.
That is a piece of evidence that has not been released to the public as this entire incident remains under investigation.
As ABC2 News first reported last month, new Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa has his own idea of what happened to Sean Suiter but is still putting together a new panel to take a fresh look.
"I have an idea but I am not gonna share right now but I can tell you I am bringing an independent outside source to come take a look at it," the commissioner said in a February interview, "I hope it tells us what happened. I hope it tells us these two theories that are out there, I am hoping it dispels one or the other and just leads us in the direction. Baltimore needs to know, deserves to know, tells us the truth. A lot of people don’t like to hear the truth but whatever the truth is, we have a responsibility to share that with the community. "
De Sousa tells us he is now pretty close to announcing who he chose to be on that panel to take a fresh look at Suiter's death.
Mayor Catherine Pugh said just this week that she and the commissioner sat down Suiter’s widow Nicole for the first time to explain the plan.
Meanwhile the complaint against the city police department is set to go before a judge on April 3rd.
