‘Dangerous place.’ Attorneys and family seek answers after man’s death in Missouri prison
Attorneys for the family of a man who died at a Missouri prison earlier this month are demanding that corrections officials hand over surveillance videos showing what transpired.
Othel Moore, a 38-year-old prisoner at Jefferson City Correctional Center, died Dec. 8.
His sister, mother and a legal team gathered Tuesday for a press conference in the Missouri Capitol rotunda in Jefferson City.
Civil rights attorney Andrew Stroth said they had not yet received evidence showing what happened from the Missouri Department of Corrections, but that there were accounts that Othel Moore had been pepper-sprayed by corrections officers and “people heard him say he couldn’t breathe.”
“This family doesn’t know anything,” Stroth said. “We haven’t seen the video. We haven’t seen the tape. What we know, what we know is that the Jefferson Center Correctional Center is a dangerous place and it’s a particularly dangerous place for Black men. What we know is that several individuals have died in the custody and control of the Jefferson City Correctional Center as well as the Missouri Department of Corrections.”
Stroth went on to say they were seeking a second autopsy and planning to take legal action.
In a news release, the Missouri Department of Corrections said Moore was pronounced dead at 9:23 a.m. on Dec. 8. He had been incarcerated for more than 18 years, and was serving a 30-year sentence for second-degree domestic assault, first-degree robbery, armed criminal action and possession of a controlled substance.
DOC spokeswoman Karen Pojmann confirmed a cell search preceded his death but said, “at this point an active investigation is underway and I can’t share any details until the information has been verified through the investigative process.”
Othel Moore’s sister Oriel Moore said her family was suffering.
“My brother won’t be here to see my kids grow up,” she said. “My brother won’t be here to protect me no more. I can’t confide in him, he can’t confide in me. I’ve always fought for him and he always fought for me, and now that he can’t fight for his self, and I wasn’t there to fight for him, I’m going to fight for him this way.”
Othel Moore, one of five siblings, “was like a gentle giant,” Oriel Moore told The Star last week in a phone interview.
He grew up in St. Louis and had a daughter.
“We were holding on because we both knew we would be reunited in just 6 more years,” Oriel Moore said. “He has a 19 year old daughter that loves and adores him. She is in shock right now.”
Moore was the 126th person to die this year in Missouri’s prison system, according to records from the Department of Corrections.
