SUICIDE OR MURDER?

'It's a cover-up': Wife of detective, 43, fatally shot with his own gun REJECTS review board's 'outlandish' conclusion that the father-of-five committed suicide and maintains he was murdered in latest scandal for Baltimore police

By Megan Sheets

Daily Mail
August 30, 2018

The wife of a Baltimore detective who was fatally shot with his own gun last November has rejected an independent review board's conclusion that he committed suicide.

Officials had initially said Sean Suiter was fatally shot by a suspect during a struggle in a vacant lot in West Baltimore on November 15, but an independent review panel released a report this week saying the 43-year-old had actually killed himself.

The detective's wife Nicole Suiter spoke publicly for the first time since her husband's death nine months ago on Wednesday, calling the review panel's suicide conclusion 'outlandish'.

Nicole described how less than an hour before the shooting, she had been joking around with the father-of-five.

'Sean was in a great mood and happy spirit. We briefly joked about a video of him dancing that I took,' she told WMAR.

Nicole said nothing about his behavior resembled that of a man preparing to take his own life.

'I knew my husband very well. He wasn't a coward. He wouldn't have went out like that,' she said. 'He wouldn't leave his family like this. He had no reason to.'

The investigation into Sean's death is still open as police and the medical examiner's office look over the report from the independent review board.

Nicole and her attorneys decried the report, claiming that it is full of lies and inconsistencies.

'I’m just shocked at what is contained in this report,' attorney Paul Siegrist said.

'Multiple facts are left out of this report. They give undue weight to certain facts and totally ignore everything else. They don’t interview witnesses. They somehow arrive to Sean’s state of mind without speaking to his wife. This is garbage.'

Sean was scheduled to testify in court in a police corruption trial the day after his death, which the report seems to suggest could have been motivation for his suicide.

The report refers to Sean as a 'subject' - a loose term that could refer to both a witness or a person of interest.

'Not only did the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Attorney’s Office say that Sean was never a suspect but was only a witness, but the second round of indictments that came out involving Wayne Jenkins and several other officers, showed that Sean was an unwitting part of their larger drug conspiracy and their planting of drugs,' attorney Jeremy Eldridge said.

Nicole said she will continue to stand with protesters in Baltimore until she gets 'the truth'.

'Based on the fact that no one knew my husband better than I, I will not accept the untimely death of Sean as nothing other than a murder, which is being covered up for reasons unknown to me or my family,' she said.

Suiter was fatally shot in the head while investigating a 2016 triple homicide with his partner in a high-crime neighborhood in West Baltimore.

Former Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, who was fired by the mayor in January, told reporters last year that Suiter approached a 'suspicious' man in a vacant lot between row houses, leading to a violent confrontation.

His partner could be seen on private surveillance video taking cover across the street, according to police.

Baltimore police originally said Suiter had been attacked and launched a manhunt, but after no arrests were made they convened the independent review board earlier this year to look into the homicide investigation.

The report released after months of review says the bullet entered from the right side of Sean's head, and that the detective was right-handed.

It also points out the lack of defensive wounds on Suiter's knuckles, hands or arms, along with the presence of shell casings from Suiter's weapon at the scene and the officer's DNA inside the barrel of the gun.

A spokesman for the city's medical examiner said Monday evening that officials would not discuss any cases still under investigation.