The Missouri Department of Corrections has terminated four corrections officers as a result of its investigation of the December death of a 38-year-old prisoner.
Othel Moore died Dec. 8. He was incarcerated at Jefferson City Correctional Center.
An autopsy was conducted by the Cole County Medical Examiner, but a report has not been completed, and a cause of death has not been determined, Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said Wednesday.
The Cole County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Moore’s death in addition to the corrections department’s internal investigation, Pojmann said. Further information about what led to the terminations was not immediately available.
Moore 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.
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In the weeks after his death, attorneys for his family called for information from corrections officials, including surveillance videos showing what transpired.
Civil rights attorney Andrew Stroth said at the time that they had not yet received evidence showing what happened from the Department of Corrections, but that there were accounts that Moore had been pepper-sprayed by corrections officers and “people heard him say he couldn’t breathe.â€
Moore grew up in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and had a daughter, his family said.
Last year, 134 prisoners died in the Missouri Department of Corrections.
View life in ºüÀêÊÓƵ through the Post-Dispatch photographers' lenses.
