Shardayreon Hill
Shardayreon Hill said Daniel assaulted her in a hospital observation room on December 20, 2013, while she was under arrest and hooked to heart monitors. She testified that she had told the friend who was with her that night; the friend told detectives she never had. The jury acquitted Daniel of all the counts involving her.
She came forward nine months later, after seeing Daniel on the news.
Daniel arrested Hill on December 20, 2013, after a stop at NE 27th and Lindsay. When a female officer found a vial of PCP, Hill fell against the patrol car and popped the vial into her mouth. Tr. 1329:8–14; Scott Adams 00625, 00656. She was taken to Integris Southwest Medical Center, decontaminated, treated in the emergency department and moved to the observation unit, with Daniel guarding her. He then took her to jail. Scott Adams 00622, 00650–51.
She went to Detective Rocky Gregory on September 19, 2014. She told the jury she went in after seeing news clips about Daniel posted on Facebook. Scott Adams 00607; Tr. 1412:5–17. Gregory asked Integris for its video. The safety director told him the system doesn’t keep most footage past two weeks. One still image survived, from 8:41 p.m. that night: Daniel in the main area with another officer who was dealing with a runaway juvenile.
Scott Adams 00649. There were no cameras in the patient rooms. Scott Adams 00650.
Hill testified that Daniel was with her from the get-go,
from the minute she arrived at the hospital until he took her to jail, and that she didn’t recall him ever leaving. Gregory agreed at trial that Daniel had gone to help the other officer with a prisoner who’s escaped Southwest Medical.
Tr. 1341:2–23, 1677:5–9. The still was taken a few minutes before the nurse in the observation unit took over her care at 8:45, so it shows Daniel away from her in the emergency department. It doesn’t show where he was later. Scott Adams 00649–50.
In a hospital observation unit, on a heart monitor, twenty feet from a nurses’ station.
Hill was under arrest and in Daniel’s custody. Hospital staff moved her to Room 1 of the Medical Decision Unit, an extension of the emergency department, and that is where she said the assaults happened. Tr. 1343:4–13; Scott Adams 00648, 00650. The nurse who had her there, Richard Watkins, called it a high-volume
emergency room and said staff walk through the unit because it’s kind of a big circle.
Tr. 1450:3–10, 1457:14–19. She was hooked to monitors that were watched at the nurses’ station. Tr. 1343:20–1344:3. Gregory described her room as at the very end of the unit almost by itself,
about twenty feet from the back nursing station and isolated somewhat.
Scott Adams 00633.
Hill testified that Daniel took off his service belt, laid it on a chair and put his penis in her mouth, and later put his fingers in her vagina, all while telling her to lie back so the heart monitors wouldn’t go off. Asked whether anyone came in, she said no one ever came to check on me.
Tr. 1348:1–5, 1349:5–1350:12, 1352:4–8.
Watkins told Gregory in 2014 that he physically goes into the room every one to two hours,
that he did not see anything inappropriate
between the officer and the patient, and that she said nothing to him about it. Scott Adams 00650. At trial he said he had no independent recollection of her. He agreed that on a busy night, unless a monitor went off, his check might be not much more than maybe a walk by,
and that a patient could go an extended period without anyone going in. Tr. 1451:16–19, 1457:20–1458:14, 1459:1–4. The emergency-room nurse, Jamie Hong, never seen the officer do anything inappropriate
while Hill was in her care, but she handed Hill off to the observation unit and didn’t go there afterward. Scott Adams 00652.
Gregory testified that he had asked the nurses who was stationed outside her room and found no one
who was there that night. Daniel’s lawyer put it to him that in all the reports from the hospital staff, there’s not one single individual in one single report that ever tells you anything about that nurses’ station and no one being there.
Gregory: That’s correct.
Tr. 1686:11–1688:10.
Her mother and sister said she told them. The friend said she didn’t.
The friend who was in the truck with Hill the night of the arrest had known her for twenty years and had lived with her. At trial Hill testified that she had told this friend about the hospital before Daniel contacted her on Facebook. Asked whether she was sure she had shared all these awful things
with her, Hill said Yes, I did.
Tr. 1393:13–1394:5.
The friend told Gregory otherwise. Hill never has told her that something bad happened to her while arrested or otherwise
and never told her she was ever sexually touched.
The friend said she had seen Hill only a couple of times after the arrest. Scott Adams 00623–24.
Hill’s mother and twin sister told Gregory something different. Both said that when Hill came home from jail at Christmas 2013, she told them the officer had made her perform oral sex and had put his fingers in her vagina. Her mother repeated it at trial: as soon as she came in the house she started telling me.
Scott Adams 00626–27, 00629; Tr. 1498:20–25, 1502:16–1503:17. Both accounts were given after Hill had gone to police in September 2014 and after Daniel’s arrest was in the news. The one person outside the family whom Hill said she told, the friend who had been with her that night, said she never heard it.
Leaving city tickets off a booking happens every day.
Hill testified that Daniel told her that her charges would go away: Give it a month.
Tr. 1351:18–20. Her mother testified that Daniel hid her tickets
: She had tickets when I bonded her out and they was gone.
Tr. 1523:11–18.
Daniel booked her on two charges, possession of PCP and destroying evidence. The city warrants weren’t on the booking sheet, though another officer, Allan Cruz, had run her name and found eight of them. Scott Adams 00622, 00625. The court officer who handles those warrants testified that it does happen daily
that an officer books someone on felony charges without listing city tickets and the jail adds them later. Tr. 1574:11–21. Asked how Daniel had hidden the tickets, Hill’s mother said I don’t know how he did it.
Asked whether those were the same tickets her daughter had warrants out on at the time of trial, she said I believe so.
Tr. 1523:19–22, 1524:20–22.
Daniel kept in touch with her after the arrest.
Daniel and Hill exchanged Facebook messages and texts after her arrest. Gregory counted about 117 texts between January 8 and early March 2014, while her case was pending, and testified he could think of no reason an officer who was a witness in that case would send them. Tr. 1615:1–19.
In January 2014 Daniel sent her a Facebook friend request. Her reply is the first message in the State’s exhibit: Damn took u long enough i been waiting lol u still got my number right??
She then thanked him for looking out for me that night,
which she told the jury meant the tickets. Daniel’s replies include You staying out of trouble
and, later, Making sure your doing ok and staying out of trouble.
State’s Ex. 117–118; Scott Adams 00615; Tr. 1394:9–19, 1395:3–21, 1396:6–8. In March he wrote that he could help her, told her to call because he wasn’t going to talk about it on Facebook, and later wrote that he was going to pick her up and asked where she was. She said she didn’t answer. In April he wrote that she had a warrant out: Try to get that taken care of. I’m worried about you I know you’re a good person, stay out of trouble.
Scott Adams 00616.
Hill testified that Daniel invited her to his house and talked about sex with her by phone and text. Daniel’s lawyer told her the records he had been given showed two phone calls, each five seconds long, and she agreed they had talked on the phone probably two times.
She had kept no screenshot of any invitation. She said the texts would turn up in the records for the numbers she had given. Tr. 1443:10–1446:13.
“Even if he didn’t like even rape nobody or nothing…”
Gregory’s interview with Hill on September 19, 2014, was videotaped. Near the end of it, Hill said: even if like, even if he didn’t like even rape nobody or nothing… he’s still gonna — he’s been in contact with people that he’s arrested.
Hill interview with Det. Gregory, Sept. 19, 2014 (video).
At trial Daniel’s lawyer read the remark back to her. She answered that she probably did say that,
and added: all I remember that I’m telling the truth about is what happened in the hospital.
Tr. 1423:19–1424:4.
The jury acquitted Daniel of all six counts involving Hill, including a separate allegation at her mother’s house. Tr. 4325:8–20.