BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) — A major setback in the investigation into who shot and killed three-year-old Devin Page Jr.
East Baton Rouge County Attorneys are charging a local GPS monitoring company with failing to notify it when the monitor stopped working.
A little over a year ago, Page was shot in his sleep. The crime has yet to be solved, but investigators have reportedly recently found a weapon used on the night of the murder.
“That gun was one of the two guns used in the shooting, not the gun that killed,” District Attorney Hillar Moore said.
Police said they found the gun on a youth who was being held on a second-degree murder charge. A local judge had ordered him to wear an ankle monitor.
“We figured we would have a gold mine of information one way or another. Either he was there or he wasn’t there when the ankle monitor was working properly,” Moore said.
The youth’s arrest warrant ordered a 365-day surveillance of the ankle, but they continued to follow him beyond the last day. When prosecutors requested the youth’s whereabouts from Criminal Tracking Services LLC, they found that the information had been lost.
“When we got these records, a lot of the time was missing, particularly the time of the murder of Devon Page,” Moore said.
Father and mother with ties to Baton Rouge face child endangerment charges in Colorado
They found this was part of a large pattern of missing GPS data from the teen’s monitor. Criminal Tracking Service owner Frederick Hall said the youth regularly forgot to charge his device.
“He didn’t charge his battery, that’s just the bottom line,” Hall said. “It’s not the first time.”
Days before Page’s death, the youth told Hall that he had lost his charger to the ankle monitor. Hall checked his stock and found he was out of chargers and needed to order more.
“Instead of leaving them overnight, I just mailed them out,” Hall said. “I shouldn’t have run out of equipment to do that, so I take responsibility.”
Moore has requested that a judge place the youth under the supervision of another company. Hall said it was a blow to his business.
“I’m just sorry, I’m sorry that this happened to the kid, and I’m sorry that it happened under my supervision,” Hall said.
This week Gov. John Bel Edwards signed legislation that would place stricter regulations on ankle monitors, including immediately notifying the provider if the monitor is inactive.
Comments are closed.