Exclusive: Accused Cop-Killer's Attorney Wants Suspect's Statement Tossed
MIAMI (CBSMiami) --The attorney for Tiniko Thompson, accused of murdering her boyfriend, Miami Police Officer Carl Patrick last May, wants Thompson's lengthy statement to police following her arrest, suppressed.
Rod Vereen made the argument in a motion filed late Wednesday night in Broward Circuit Court. He said that Pembroke Pines Police Detective Carl Heim did not read Thompson her Miranda rights and that he did not stop questioning her when Thompson said she wanted her lawyer present.
Click here to watch Carey Codd's report.
Attached to the motion is a copy of Thompson's statement. What emerges from the 58-page document is a soap opera -- there's a fake pregnancy, an argument over thousands of dollars in credit card debt and ultimately, a murder charge. Thompson discusses her illnesses, her relationship with Patrick, her desire to return to work, why she told people she was pregnant when she really wasn't and what happened the morning Patrick was killed.
During the statement, Detective Heim asked Thompson, "What happened with the pregnancy? When were you pregnant, when were you not pregnant?" Thompson replied, "There's no pregnancy. He wanted to adopt."
But investigators said Thompson told people she was pregnant for months and was on family leave from her job as a Public Service Aide. Thompson told detectives she wanted to return to work and end the charade. She told a detective the couple could not get pregnant and the entire situation was a source of contention.
"'I can't go on like this," Thompson said she told Patrick. "'I need to go back. I need to go back to work and you know as far as this we just tell them you know we lost the baby' cause we were planning to adopt a baby."
READ: Fallen Miami Police Officer's Girlfriend Arrested For Murder
Thompson said she maxed out the couple's credit card and that led to another argument.
"When they let him know that I had done spent up the limit," she said." And he came home he, he had a fit about it."
But on the morning Patrick died, Thompson told a detective everything seemed fine until Patrick confronted her.
"I know he had anger issues and get mad but never could I have imagined waking up to a 9 millimeter in my face and I gotta fight for myself," Thompson told police. Later in her statement, she told Detective Heim, "Somebody put the gun in your face what you gonna do? What would anybody do? You're gonna try to fight. Or I coulda just stood there and he woulda killed me. Then what would have happened? Would he have been locked up? No. But because he an officer they probably woulda cut him some slack."
Thompson stuck to her story that the couple fought over the gun and it went off, leaving Patrick dead.
"We struggled," she said. "We fought. He got on that side. He, he, he I'm get to the side. I was tussling with him and he's getting all up in my face and everything else. And the next thing I know I hear the thing go pow."
A detective asked Thompson why she left Patrick's house and failed to call for help.
Detective: "Why didn't you run out of the house and as you were driving away call police or Rescue so somebody can, could still save him?"
Thompson: "I don't know. It's just (shrugs shoulders)"
Detective: "Was he still alive when you left?"
Thompson: "I don't know. I saw him fall. That's all."
Detective: "Okay. So you saw him fall?"
Thompson: "And I, and I asked him, I said, 'Can you hear me?' He said, 'You b****.' He called me a b****."
In the Pembroke Pines Police arrest report, investigators left no doubt that Thompson shot and killed Patrick inside his home and left him to die. The arrest report reveals that Patrick was shot in the inner biceps area.
Investigators wrote that "(Patrick) was on his back in a confined place with a restricted ability to move and his body angled toward the wall at the time he was shot" and "the Medical Examiner advised the wound would not be consistent with him shooting himself." The report said "the injury would have been survivable had medical assistance been obtained."
READ: Girlfriend Of Slain Miami Officer Appears In Court
Police said Thompson left the home and took Patrick's cell phone with her -- depriving him of the opportunity to call for help. Investigators said Patrick's body was wrapped in a comforter while he was in police uniform and that he was still alive. The report also says that "there were burn marks found on the bedding that covered him that were consistent with something being lit on fire and then placed on top of the body."
During her interview with police, Thompson denied murdering Patrick and said she wanted to go home to her family not to a jail filled with violent people.
"(I)f I have to go to sleep that I can't because they might attack me or something and I've never done anything bad like this ever in my life," she said.
Thompson, who worked for the Miami Police Department since 2005, said the feedback from people she worked with was difficult to handle.
"Everyday to hear this stuff like I'm a bad person and who they never said anything about me. I work for the same company. They never said anything about me. They only portrayed him for who he was. And that's a person in uniform. I wear a uniform, too….I really don't like what was said about me and I know God is gonna see me through this and I know the truth. It's gonna be in my favor because I didn't do, I didn't, I didn't murder Carl. I did not."
She added, "I can't survive when I look at the TV and I hear all they talk how good this person is but (they) don't know how the person is when he's at home and how, what he's doing to me."
CBS 4 News asked the Broward State Attorney's how they will respond to attorney Vereen's motion to have Thompson's statement to police suppressed. A spokesperson for the agency said they do not comment on court motions like this one.
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