A Maryland probation agent who authorities say was killed by a client during a home visit had earlier reported to his agency that the man — a convicted sex offender — no longer wanted to cooperate with the probation process, according to police radio traffic on the night the agent was found dead.
The concerns, as captured by the public-safety-scanner archiving service openmhz.com, are consistent with other worries raised by probation employees about the client, Emanuel Sewell, of Chevy Chase, according officials at the union for the agents.
Sewell had been under their supervision since 2021 after serving 25 years in prison for sex assault and other crimes.
The slain agent, Davis Martinez, 33, had gone to see him for a routine home visit on May 31. Martinez was stabbed repeatedly in his head and face before his body was wrapped in plastic bags and stuffed under a bed, police say. Sewell, 54, was captured a day later in West Virginia and has been charged with murder.
His attorneys have declined to comment about the case.
The tragic death — and what safety procedures had been in place — are the source of growing controversy between front-line probation workers and their management at Maryland’s Division of Parole and Probation, which is part of the state’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
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Union official Stuart Katzenberg said members “raised multiple concerns about Sewell” before Martinez’s killing.
He spoke Tuesday several hours after more than 50 members of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) rallied in Catonsville to call for enhanced safety procedures.
Among the union’s demands: safer staffing levels that would allow agents to conduct visits in pairs — not alone, as Martinez had.
The union also called for “a third-party investigation into the problems that led to the killing of Agent Davis Martinez.”
Officials at the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services declined to comment Tuesday on the specific police radio traffic that cited Martinez’s concerns. But a spokesman there said that in the wake of Martinez’s death, the department is committed to fixing any safety deficiencies.
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“The department has taken immediate and decisive action to reassess and enhance our current policies and practices,” the spokesman said. “This reassessment includes examining equipment and policies that affect every element of work done by Parole and Probation employees.”
Among the areas of focus are home visits and whether high-risk clients should be visited alone by agents.
The department earlier had announced a management shake-up in the parole and probation division and said it is continuing to investigate events around Martinez’s death.
Sewell’s criminal record goes back to at least the mid-1990s. In 1997, he pleaded guilty to first-degree sex offense amid accusations that he climbed through the ground-floor apartment window of a man he didn’t know and raped him at knifepoint.
After his release from prison in 2021, his status as a convicted sex offender made him subject to monthly home visits by probation agents. An agent who had this responsibility earlier this year grew concerned about going inside his home, according to Rayneika Robinson, president of the Parole and Probation employees’ AFSCME local.
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“Agent Martinez came across the case because one of his co-workers didn’t want [it]. She felt unsafe,” Robinson said in an interview. “He didn’t want his co-worker to go out feeling unsafe. So he went ahead and stepped up and went to the home for her.”
Robinson said the case was officially transferred to Martinez on May 7.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much agency managers knew about the switch or the reason it was made.
Martinez went to Sewell’s apartment for a home visit on May 31. Based on a witness statement to police detailed in court charging papers, he appeared to have gotten there around 9 a.m. He wore a bulletproof vest but was not armed with a handgun. Probation agents are not armed, according to their union.
Court records do not say when Martinez was attacked. A witness indicated that Sewell left his apartment about 2 p.m., charging documents say.
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Shortly before 6 p.m., Montgomery County Police received a request to go to Sewell’s apartment and check on the agent’s welfare. As they tried to piece together what was going on — looking for the agent’s car, trying to reach him on his phone, growing more concerned — an officer came on the radio and told his colleagues what he had learned about information reported into the Parole and Probation’s system:
“There’s an entry in the P and P system where this agent who’s missing had a phone call with this client and the client said he didn’t want to be harassed any longer by Parole and Probation, and he was not going to cooperate,” the officer said, according to openmhz.com. “That phone call took place on May 7th of this year.”
Officers eventually forced their way inside. Scanner recordings report that they found blood on the floor, discovered Martinez’s body and requested homicide detectives come to the scene.
Union workers rallied at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in Catonsville about continued change they want to see after the killing of a parole agent. Under criticism last week, state leaders announced they named three interim leaders, including one to lead the parole and probation division, though it did not make clear what had become of those in the jobs previously.
