WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania -- The correctional officer and inmate killed in a fall Monday night smashed through closed elevator doors and plummeted to their deaths during a scuffle in what appears to have been a “freak accident,” the county manager said Tuesday.
Correctional Officer Kristopher Moules, 25, of Larksville, and Timothy D. Gilliam Jr., 27, of Wilkes-Barre, died following the confrontation on the aging jail’s fifth floor about 6:25 p.m. Monday.
The pair had been engaged in a confrontation that began as an exchange of words between inmate and officer and escalated into an altercation that spilled out into a common area near the elevator, county Manager David Pedri said Tuesday afternoon.
Pedri noted jail staff had already reviewed surveillance footage and determined Moules did nothing wrong.
“The altercation, which lasted only seconds, proved to be extremely tragic,” he said.
The officer sounded an alarm that prompted other officers to run up five flights of stairs to assist, and another officer was on the scene within seconds, Pedri said. The two officers tried to subdue Gilliam, at which point he and Moules “smashed” through the elevator door, he said.
“That elevator door gave way, leading to their tragic fall,” Pedri said. “The other corrections officer who was involved in the incident came very close to also falling into the elevator shaft.”
Pedri, who recently took the helm as manager, said he had already called upon Luzerne County Council to begin examining the possibility of a new jail to replace the more than century-old structure on Water Street.
“It is our duty now as county administrators to make sure that his name and the lessons learned from this matter are never forgotten,” Pedri said, adding that his hope was the new jail would bear Moules’ name.
An autopsy conducted Tuesday morning ruled both men died of multiple traumatic injuries sustained in a fall, according to the Luzerne County coroner’s office.
Gilliam’s manner of death was ruled accidental, while the manner of death for Moules was listed as undetermined pending the results of further investigation, according to the office.
District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis said her office was still conducting a criminal investigation into the matter and that she could not comment pending the results of that probe.
County records show Kristopher Moules was hired as a correctional officer at LCCF in September 2015 at a salary of $31,745.
His mother Kitty Moules, speaking in the garage of the family’s home in a well-maintained Larksville neighborhood off East Broadway Street, gestured to several fishing poles leaning against the wall, saying Kristopher Moules was supposed to be off Tuesday and had planned to go fishing at a cabin.
“He just went to work, and now he’s dead,” Kitty Moules said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “He was just a perfect person — well-mannered, well-behaved, excellent student, excellent athlete.”
She declined further comment, deferring comment to her other son or husband, who had gone to the jail to retrieve Kristopher Moules’s truck.
During high school, Kristopher Moules was a pitcher for the Wyoming Valley West Senior High School Spartans, helping the team land a spot in the state quarterfinal against Parkland in 2009.
He was part of Lackawanna College’s Falcons when they made it to the NJCAA Junior College World Series in 2012, and went on to play as a first baseman and outfielder for Youngstown State University.
Gilliam was a 27-year-old Wilkes-Barre resident being held for failing to register with police as a sex offender.
Court records show Gilliam was arrested in February on a felony charge of failing to register his address with state police. He has been in custody on the charge since, with bail set at $2,500.
Gilliam’s criminal history includes a guilty plea in 2008 to a count of statutory sexual assault after counts of forcible rape and sexual assault were dismissed. Police alleged that a 14-year-old girl sleeping on a couch at a home on Dougher Lane reported waking up in the middle of the night and finding Gilliam having intercourse with her.
When the girl asked what he was doing, Gilliam replied, “Nah, don’t worry about it, everything is all good,” according to a police affidavit. After the assault, he warned her that he had “lies that can go around what you say,” the complaint alleges.
During questioning, Gilliam later admitted he knew the girl was only 14 but that she looked so good — used the word “adorable” — that he had sex with her anyway.
Former Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. sentenced Gilliam to six to 18 months in jail for the crime.
Court documents show Gilliam had only two other criminal cases in Pennsylvania, both from 2011. The first, filed in August 2011, involved charges of simple assault and harassment, with Gilliam getting a year of probation after pleading guilty to the misdemeanor assault.
The other case, filed in October 2011, landed Gilliam in the county jail for 10 to 23 months after he pleaded guilty to interfering with custody of children, endangering the welfare of children and resisting arrest.
In that case, he was accused of kicking in his girlfriend’s door at the Sherman Hills apartments and snatching her 14-month-old boy while she was in the shower. When police found him at Northampton and Washington streets, he was acting “extremely bizarre” and high on synthetic drugs, according to police.
Gilliam took a fighting stance and had to be subdued with a Taser after tussling with several officers, police said.
Federal court records show Gilliam filed a civil rights lawsuit against county jail officials related to his stay during that sentence, alleging he had witnessed correctional officers hitting two other inmates and that he was taunted and thrown into the hole for reporting it. Gilliam also claimed he had been “mocked for my religious beliefs,” with officers saying Muslims “pray like monkeys.”
The pro se complaint Gilliam filed indicates he took medication for manic depression and bipolar disorder.
U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo threw the lawsuit out in March 2014, a month after it was filed, because Gilliam failed to pay the filing fee or complete an application to avoid paying the fee.
Gilliam’s mother, Kia Bradford of Woodbridge, N.J., said her son moved to Luzerne County at least 10 years ago to live with an aunt and that she periodically spoke to him, but had not done so since his most recent arrest. Gilliam lived for a time at the Sherman Hills Apartments and had a child with a woman there, she said.
Bradford said she thought he might have been having trouble readjusting after being incarcerated the first time and said she hoped people would recognize he lost his life as well.
“It’s a tragedy, the situation that happened to the officer and Timothy,” Bradford said. “There were two lives that were affected. I think Timothy is getting lost because he was an inmate, but he was a soul, he was a human being. Sometimes that doesn’t matter to people, but he was a soul and God loved him too, just like he loves everybody else.”
Copyright 2016 The Citizens' Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)
Tribune News Service
