Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said Tuesday that she expects a decision will be made soon on who will investigate the death of state police recruit Enrique Delgado-Garcia after a training exercise last week.
"This case is devastating," Campbell said during an interview on GBH radio's "Boston Public Radio" program. "I actually was coming back from a conference when I got the news from one of my troopers, and all of us were heartbroken and I cried that night."
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Delgado-Garcia, 25, died at a hospital on Friday, a day after the exercise at the Massachusetts State Police Academy in New Braintree, according to state police. A state police spokesman said the academy's on-site medical team responded immediately after Delgado-Garcia became unresponsive. They determined that he required urgent medical care and took him to the hospital, where he died.
Now it falls to the attorney general to help determine the next steps in the investigation. Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said Monday that he cannot oversee the investigation because it would be a conflict since Delgado-Garcia previously worked in his office as a victim witness advocate.
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"Because of this close relationship, someone else will be handling this matter," Early said. "There's no way this office can handle this."
That means an outside entity will need to investigate, but that is complicated by the fact that all of the other district attorneys' offices in the state and even Campbell's office has state police detectives assigned to them.
"We have to figure some things out and we have to figure them out rather quickly," Campbell said. "I'm in conversation with DA Early and other agencies to talk about who is best positioned to take on this investigation. We all agree he has a conflict of interest. He knows the family, it's too deep."
"We'll have a decision point very soon to figure out who is best to lead this investigation," she added. "I get the sense of urgency here for the family. They have a lot of questions. They need a point of contact to go to and someone to navigate this investigation on their behalf."
Making it even more difficult, Campbell said, is that there's a civil case as well, and as the attorney general she represents state agencies like the state police.
"So it's a dual role here I have to navigate very carefully," she said. "We'll get to a place where the family has answers and an appropriate authority to investigate for them."
Campbell said this case will also likely force state police to take a closer look at their training practices.
"You do need training, of course. Now the Massachusetts State Police has the opportunity to look at making sure it's safe. They're going to have to go back to the drawing board on that and I think they will."
The police training in question can cover a range of physical encounters to defend against tackles, punches and other attacks. A state police spokesman did not specify the type of exercise Delgado-Garcia took part in.
Early said Monday that there is video of the incident, and confirmed that it happened in a boxing ring.
Delgado-Garcia's family is demanding answers in the wake of his death, saying they don't understand how a training exercise could have left him with fatal injuries, including severe brain trauma. His mother told NBC10 Boston and Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra that he was hit and injured.
“I don’t understand why it was so rough if it was just training," Sandra Garcia said in Spanish. “I want them to explain it to me, that the state explains to me what happened with my son. … Why did he hit him so hard that it killed him, that it destroyed his brain and broke all of my son’s teeth and he had a neck fracture too, my son.”
"I'm ashamed of MSP, and I feel like they need to thoroughly investigate this and justice needs to be brought because its not okay how they're treating these troops." a friend of Delgado-Garcia's added. "If my friend could end up like this this could be anyone's son or daughter."
Gov. Maura Healey made her first public remarks about the tragedy on Tuesday, calling Delgado-Garcia's death "absolutely so heartbreaking and sad," while also urging people not to jump to conclusions.
"My heart goes out to Enrique's family," the governor said. "Obviously, as with any death, there will be an investigation... We certainly want to understand exactly what happened and be very clear in communicating with Enrique's family about that."
"As governor, I'm committed to making sure we have a fully understanding of what happened and will clearly communicate with the public on that," she added.
Healey said she did not want to comment on the family's remarks until the investigation is complete and does not see any need to halt training exercises as a result of Delgado-Garcia's death.
"I think people need to not jump to conclusions," Healey said. "I think that's important, until we know the facts. Right now that class actually they're about to wrap up training. In fact, their graduation ceremony is in just a few weeks. But we're going to make sure the matter is thoroughly reviewed and we understand exactly what happened. Protecting the men and women who are both training and serving us out there is certainly first and foremost."
