Told He Could Leave Police Station, He Does--5 Days Later
A man who had been told that he wouldn’t be charged in a shooting and that he was free to go home surprised police when he finally sauntered out of an unlocked interrogation room after five days without food or water.
Jorge Gonzalez, 30, was taken to the downtown station Dec. 7 for questioning about a shooting that morning. After interrogating him, detectives told him he could leave, then they left the room. But the detectives who were supposed to drive Gonzalez home never returned to get him.
“He could have just walked out and said: ‘Hey, what’s the problem? Can I go?’ or whatever,” police spokesman Richard Roundtree said. But Gonzalez didn’t.
He did stick his head out of the unlocked 7-by-11-foot room a few times to ask, “Where’s the detective?”
Police discovered the error when Gonzalez finally walked out of the room Wednesday. “I guess he just reached his limit,” Roundtree said.
Gonzalez, who used discarded paper coffee cups to urinate in during his stay, was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital Wednesday where he was declared healthy.
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