The prisoner who shared the van with Freddie Gray claims he never told police Gray was trying to injure himself.
In
an interview with WJZ’s Mike Schuh, Donta Allen breaks his silence and
shows the anger he is feeling towards the report published in The
Washington Post about his supposed statement to police.
“I am
Donta Allen. I am the one who was in the van with Freddie Gray,” Allen
said in the interview, embedded below. “When I was in the back of that
van it did not stop or nothing. All it did was go straight to the
station, but I heard a little banging, like he was banging his head … I
didn’t even know he was in the van until we got to the station.”
The
Washington Post reported that Allen told investigators he could hear
Gray “banging against the walls” and that he believed he “was
intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police report.
Which was then repeated with fervor by every major news outlet in the
nation and portrayed as the reason for Freddie Gray’s murder.
Allen and Gray could not see one another as they were separated by a metal divider.
“And
they trying to make it seem like I told them that, I made it like
Freddie Gray did that to himself,” Allen said. “Why the [expletive]would
he do that to himself?”
