In a press release issued Monday, Mayor Stephen Jones seemed to claim credit for the sheriff’s office reopening a crash investigation and deflected blame for a mishandled drug test of the city police officer involved in the crash.
But according to Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins and a spokesperson with Baptist Memorial Health Care, multiple claims by the mayor are simply not accurate.
For one, the mayor’s statement blames emergency room personnel for the failure to administer a drug and alcohol test on Columbus Police Department Officer Jeremy Harris within an hour after the crash, which is required by the city’s policy for employees involved in vehicular accidents.
Sheriff’s office investigators received medical records from Baptist on July 23 for both Harris and the civilian driver, Devion Bankhead. The records showed bloodwork from Bankhead came back clean while no test was ever administered to Harris.
“A urine drug screen was ordered for Officer Harris; however, it was later canceled by the Columbus Police Department because they advised they would do their own drug screen at the jail because they did not want to wait to have it done at the ER,” Investigator Drew McCain wrote in the investigative case log. “It was undetermined if anything was in Officer Harris’ system at the time of the accident.”
Rather than CPD canceling the test, the mayor’s statement said emergency room personnel were “confused about what to do” because the staff member “had historically collected the samples for analysis had passed away.”
Kim Alexander, director of public relations and internal communications for Baptist Memorial Health Care, directly refuted that claim and confirmed staff did try to administer the test.
“While there was some initial confusion about what occurred, we can confirm Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle’s staff followed their training and attempted to collect specimen samples from all drivers involved, which is our protocol for these situations,” she wrote in an email to The Dispatch. “We have not experienced any changes in staffing or our procedures that would alter this practice.”
When asked Tuesday about who was ultimately responsible for the failure of Harris’ drug test to be administered in a timely fashion, City Attorney Jeff Turnage told The Dispatch it is the city’s responsibility. He also acknowledged the city can’t force any third party to abide by its policies.
“As soon as we discovered that it wasn’t done (at the hospital), as our policy, as our understanding then was, we ordered it,” he said. “… It’s our responsibility to enforce our own policy.”
Both the mayor’s press release and Chief Joseph Daughtry have since confirmed a urinalysis was administered to Harris the day after the crash at the city’s crime lab. However, Hawkins said LCSO has still not received the results of that test.
‘We were gathering information for a possible criminal case’
The press release implies a conversation Jones and Turnage had with Hawkins the day after the crash was the impetus for the sheriff’s office full-scale investigation of it. It said Jones and Turnage had personally reviewed the body camera footage from the July 16 crash before going to the scene the next day.
Hawkins arrived at the scene while the pair were there, at which point they told him they believed Bankhead’s vehicle was stationary. Harris’ patrol vehicle crashed into it while traveling 77.4 mph in the 30 mph speed zone.
“Thereafter, the (sheriff’s) department investigated further and revised the crash report finding that Mr. Bankhead’s vehicle was stationary and that Officer Harris lost control of his vehicle,” Jones’ press release said.
Speaking to The Dispatch on Tuesday, Hawkins clarified the investigation was still open when he spoke with Jones and Turnage, though the initial crash report had been completed based on what Harris had said happened, which was inconsistent with the final results of the investigation.
Bankhead, at the time, was unable to provide a statement for that initial report because he was being airlifted to University of Mississippi Medical Center with a brain bleed.
“To complete the accident report, we’ve got a time limit,” Hawkins said. “We’ve got to put it in the system, so we had to complete the initial accident report, but that is not the accident investigation. It’s two separate things.”
Far from being closed, Hawkins said the case was in fact being treated as a potential criminal investigation at the time, dependent on whether Bankhead survived his injuries.
“We didn’t know if he was going to live or die,” Hawkins said. “… So we were gathering information for a possible criminal case that might have come out if the (driver) had died. We were looking at maybe a … manslaughter case.”
It was during his interaction with Jones and Turnage that Hawkins said he first learned there was body camera footage of the collision. That footage had not already been turned over to his office for the investigation, he said.
Hawkins said the mayor made sure his investigators received a copy of Harris’ body camera footage after his July 17 conversation with Jones and Turnage. However, other materials investigators requested from Columbus Police Department have yet to be provided.
“There were some things that we requested that we did not get from the city,” Hawkins said. “… We requested body cam footage from other officers that responded to the scene and have still not received that.
“We were told later on that as soon as (city officials) found out (Harris) hadn’t taken his urinalysis test, they sent him to their crime lab, which the police department oversees, for a drug analysis,” he added. “We have not seen any results or anything of that nature, so we don’t know what the outcome of that was.”
Managing Editor Zack Plair and reporter Cadence Harvey contributed to this report.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
