“I had been initially optimistic about the way law enforcement was handling the case-searching Kane’s house early and seemingly taking the victim and the accusations seriously”.
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Last week Kane apologized to fans and teammates for the investigation.
Kane has not been charged in the case. But Eoannou is wrong because we emphatically do not know the envelope “to be the evidence bag that once contained the rape kit evidence” because John Glascott, Erie County Commissioner of Police Services, the body heading up the investigation into the allegations, said it is not. If it was compromised, he said, the evidence would lose all integrity.
He told reporters Wednesday that he’d been told Kane’s DNA was not found on the alleged victim “from the waist down”.
“It could have been there a day and a half”, he said, because the woman used the back door when she left for work that morning.
But Eoannou said his client is still cooperating with authorities and willing to testify. “I mean, what about the victim, just supposing the accuser isn’t lying?” People were left to speculate whether the bag was left anonymously by a Good Samaritan trying to help or a bully aiming to intimidate. As well, Erie County Central Police Services has not definitively stated that the evidence that was analyzed is the evidence taken from the complainant.
“It contains my client’s identity”. It contains my client’s birthday.
To authenticate his claims, Eoannou produced a photograph of the bag, which apparently included the initials of the nurse who performed the evidence collection at the hospital in Erie County after the alleged incident August. 2. “It is authentic”.
‘I will say this hasn’t been an easy situation for any of us to deal with, ‘ McDonough said.
The retired police officer said that it’s not inconceivable that a bag that had held evidence would be replaced with another one. “In a rape case, the victim gets attacked …”
The entire investigation now, Eoannou said, and any results gleaned thus far from it, could be under question. “We have an evidence bag that was ripped open, something was either taken out of it, or placed in another bag”, Eoannou said. If the evidence is disallowed, we may never know.
Cambria commented on the unsure nature of the bag’s discovery.
“Obviously, somebody else isn’t happy with the results”, said attorney Paul Cambria.
Eoannou provided pictures of the evidence bag, after a person brought it forward, noting how an evidence bag would typically be kept and safeguarded from tampering.
Cambria said he’s not buying it.
Current and former law enforcement officials familiar with the process say the very first action conducted by an examiner is to make sure that seals on evidence bags are secure and that there are no signs of tampering.
The Hamburg Police Department released a statement Wednesday afternoon saying that its handling of the evidence has been “unassailable”.
ECMC declined to comment on this story.
Today’s developments in the alleged sexual assault case against Patrick Kane were nothing short of shocking and unprecedented.
Eoannou later issued a statement saying he was not questioning whether the Erie County Central Police Services “has the evidence they were “given” still in their custody or whether it was given to them in an evidence bag”.
It remains to be seen if a new investigation will be conducted.
Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita is now investigating the tampering allegation. “The effect of all of this, has been to discredit my client in the public”. This is supposed to be a secret investigation. She is absolutely devastated. “This is a classic example why victims don’t come forward in rape cases”.
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Eoannou called media coverage of the rape case the worst case of victim bashing he had ever witnessed.
