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Man Charged After Wife’s Deadly Plunge Off Parking Garage, After Which Police Say They Found Him Straddling Her Body
Allissa Martin started recording on her phone during the argument with her husband, Bradley Jenkins, and the resulting audio captured the moment she fell, according to police.
An Illinois corrections officer is facing assault charges after his new wife was found dead from a fall at a parking garage over the weekend.
Bradley S. Jenkins, a 30-year-old Taylorville resident, was charged Monday with third-degree domestic assault related to the death of his wife, 27-year-old Allissa L. Martin, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. A judge set his cash-only bail at $100,000.
Police say that they arrived at a parking garage near Busch Stadium in St. Louis at around 1:45 a.m. in response to a 911 call about a woman having fallen, according to the Post-Dispatch. When they arrived, they found Jenkins, who seemed “agitated and appeared to be intoxicated,” sitting atop Martin’s bloodied body, police reportedly said in court documents. They later found Martin’s cell phone on the seventh floor of the garage, still recording video which they said would come to contradict Jenkins’ version of events.
Det. Mark West said that the video from Martin’s phone shows the woman pointing the camera at herself before turning it onto Jenkins, with whom she was arguing at the time, the Post-Dispatch reports, citing a probable cause statement.
“During the recording, you can hear her yell for him to quit punching her face. She eventually drops the camera. Shortly after that, you hear her scream as she falls and you hear the thump of her body hitting the ground,” police said, according to St. Louis’ WICS.
Police were told that the couple, who are both corrections officers and who were married in Las Vegas last month, had attended a baseball game with co-workers on Saturday night, WICS reports.
In his report, West wrote that Jenkins lied about not being in the parking garage with Martin prior to her fall and that he denied that the argument between them turned physical, according to the Post-Dispatch. The detective stated that both claims were contradicted by video and audio footage captured by Martin’s cellphone before her death.
Police are currently investigating the woman's death. They have requested an autopsy and will later determine whether Jenkins will face murder charges, according to KMOV, a CBS affiliate based in St. Louis.
