Washington Post: Prisoner said Freddie Gray was ‘banging against the walls’ during ride in police van

thisistwitchy | 9:42 PM on April 29, 2015

According to a police investigative document obtained by Peter Hermann of the Washington Post, a prisoner who shared a police transport van with Freddie Gray told police that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself.”

The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version.

Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at a police station on April 12. The 25-year-old had suffered a spinal injury and died a week later, touching off waves of protests across Baltimore, capped by a riot Monday in which hundreds of angry residents torched buildings, looted stores and pelted police officers with rocks.