PGN filed an appeal last week in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, seeking dispatch records from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office pertaining to the Nizah Morris incident.
Last month, the D.A.’s Office released a document pertaining to a vehicle stop by Officer Elizabeth Skala, who was involved in the Morris incident.
The Office of Open Records ordered the document’s release after the D.A.’s Office indicated it’s complete.
But the document appears to be missing a date, location, starting time, priority level and district-control numbers for Skala’s vehicle stop.
In August, the D.A.’s Office provided an attestation under penalty of perjury, verifying that it couldn’t locate another copy of the document in its possession.
This week, PGN offered to withdraw its appeal if the D.A.’s Office will provide an attestation under penalty of perjury that it doesn’t have any dispatch records for the vehicle stop, other than the document already provided.
The paper also requested explicit verification that the agency’s criminal files were searched. Four prior attestations from the agency haven’t contained such verification.
One of those attestations vaguely alluded to files containing police-generated Morris records, and PGN also requested verification that those files were searched.
The agency indicated it would consider providing another attestation to settle the matter. But the possibility of such a settlement remained pending by presstime. Skala initiated the vehicle stop during the early-morning hours of Dec. 22, 2002, while she was still assigned to handle Morris, who was extremely inebriated.
Shortly before the vehicle stop, Skala gave Morris a Center City “courtesy ride.” Minutes after the ride, the transwoman was found with blunt-force trauma to her head.
Morris died two days later, and her homicide remains unsolved.
Skala ticketed a motorist at 13th and Filbert streets rather than responding to Morris at 16th and Walnut streets, where she was in critical condition due to a head injury.
It’s believed that complete dispatch records for Skala’s vehicle stop could help explain why Morris wasn’t promptly transported to a hospital.
By the time medics transported Morris to a hospital — an hour after the first 911 call — she was brain dead.
Complete dispatch records also could help explain why none of the officers who responded to Morris documented the courtesy ride, nor ensured a prompt investigation of her head injury.
PGN’s appeal was filed Oct. 30. By presstime, the case hadn’t been assigned to a judge.