Five members of the Mount Vernon Police Department have been suspended in the wake of an Oct. 16 shooting in the back of a prisoner-transport van.
Police said in a news release Thursday, Oct. 23, that the two officers driving the van, a sergeant and two other officers had failed to detect that Louis Soto had a .22 caliber Rohm-RGT revolver following his Oct. 15 arrest on burglary and sex abuse charges.
The following evening, Officers Omar Bryce and Sonjea Collins, were transporting Soto and four other prisoners to the county jail in Valhalla after their City Court appearances. A few blocks from police headquarters, at West Lincoln Avenue and Oak Street, the officers heard a gunshot from the back of the van and one of the prisoners said they had been hit.
The van returned to headquarters and the prisoners were taken out. Police found Soto with the gun and one of the other prisoners with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the lower leg. The victim has not been publicly identified but The Journal News/lohud has learned he is a 23-year-old man facing menacing and criminal contempt charges.
Soto has additionally been charged with first-degree attempted assault, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second- and third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance related to cocaine and methamphetamine that were also allegedly found in his sock and fanny pack.
Police initially placed Collins and Sgt. Joseph Diaz on desk duty. Collins was one of the officers who initially arrested Soto and Diaz was the supervisor in the holding cells.
Following an investigation this week they were suspended without pay for 30 days, as were Bryce and Emergency Services Unit Officers Cody Housen and Christian Pacheco, who were also present when Soto was arrested and in the cell block.
“Based on our established training, policies, and procedures, early findings indicate that the firearm should have been detected during arrest or intake,” police said in the release. “While a 2022 policy update limited the broad use of strip searches, a properly conducted frisk or authorized strip search should have revealed the weapon.”
The release said the investigation was ongoing and that the officers could still face further disciplinary action. It did not reveal where police believe Soto had the weapon from the time of his arrest until the shooting.
The District Attorney’s Office is also investigating how police failed to detect the gun.
Diaz was hired in 2017 and was promoted to sergeant only last month. Housen is a former New York City police officer who joined the department in 2021. Pacheco became a police officer in 2022. Collins and Bryce joined the department last year.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Five Mount Vernon cops suspended after failing to detect gun used in prisoner van shooting
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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