Montgomery County police say just before 6 p.m. on Friday, May 31, officers responded to a home in Chevy Chase to conduct a welfare check after parole Officer Davis Martinez didn't report back to the agency.
They found Officer Martinez dead inside the home, having suffered multiple injuries, according to Fox5DC .
The suspected killer, registered sex offender Emanuel Edward Sewell was arrested by U.S. Marshals in West Virginia Saturday evening.
Sewell, 54, was on mandatory release after serving 25 out of 29 years of his sentence. He was due to come off of the conditions of his release in October 2025, according to Secretary Carolyn J. Scruggs with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
On Monday, Officer Martinez’s union leaders and co-workers in the Silver Spring office of the Division of Parole and Probation said agents believed Sewell was dangerous and that Martinez could have had backup if the agency wasn’t dangerously understaffed, WJLA reports.
“The facts are he was violent and he was a sex offender and numerous agents in the past had voiced their concerns about this murderer,” said Patrick Moran, President of AFSCME Council 3.
Moran has been sounding the alarm for years, claiming staffing shortages in corrections and parole and probation brought on by hiring freezes and then the pandemic had become dangerous. Even though Martinez is the first Maryland parole agent ever killed in the line of duty, Moran said this could have been avoided, “And they did nothing about it or they were told we were told, ‘Oh that’s not a problem.'"