he has family and we love him. although the visitors center is a short walk away, security is stepped up for confinement inmates. burks is shackled, escorted by two officers and driven to visitation. the visit will be noncontact, meaning he ll be separated from his family by a pane of glass. i get to see my baby, i don t even care. i m a mamma s boy. it don t even matter. at the same time, it would be better. unfortunately it s got to be through the glass, though. it is what it is. i need to see him. i need to make sure that he s okay. when i come to see him, i make him stand up, turn around, let me see your body, let me check you out, make sure you re eating well. he s going to say, mom, i m okay, don t worry. but mom s going to worry anyway. i need to see for myself. i have to come here so i can see him to make sure he s okay. i cry myself to sleep a lot just thinking about it because he s
i m tom hanks. i m a detective with the indiana state police. this is your copy. i m going to give to it this officer. i m going to read this to you. arrest warrant, the state of indiana, authorized the warrant on demetrius burks, no social security number listed. date of birth, the offense of count one, battery, resulting in bodily injury, class d felony. if this is set for initial hearing, the warrant does not expire. that s a d felony, sir. it s going to be count one, battery resulting in bodily injury, class d felony, correct. okay? yes, sir. all right. thank you. he got an initial hearing i
hours later. everything was still standing when i left. the next morning, my niece and my nephew and brother-in-law came in and told me to turn on the tv. i turned on the tv and every channel i flipped it on showed the catholic church on fire. fingerprints on a church wine bottle led the police to him. they arrested him three weeks later. despite his claims of innocence, abbott says he took a plea deal to avoid testifying against his friends and being labeled a snitch. going to prison having a snitch name is like having a child molestation name. you just don t have it. they don t last long here. i wouldn t want to have the name snitch. i can t do it. abbott s not alone in his claim that he is serving time only because he didn t want to snitch on someone else. burks admitted to being in the
car in a drive-by shooting. but he says he wasn t the trigger man. there s no award you get for not snitching. burks is serving a 55-year sentence for the murder of a south african immigrant. he came to america to work for his family. and he got killed. he was an innocent bystander. it wasn t meant for him. it was just a bunch of guys riding around high and drunk just doing stuff that don t even matter at all. and now that night turned into
burks admitted to being in the car the night his victim was murdered in a drive-by shooting. but burkes says, he wasn t the trigger man. there s no award you get for not snitching. but at the same time, the guy who did it, he got to live with it every day. i m not innocent of anything. i ve done plenty of things in my life that would eventually lead me here or dead, you know what i mean? i believe god is punishing me now for everything that i did, in fact, do. so i m just taking this time to learn from all the mistakes and right all those wrongs. burks is serving a 55-year sentence for the murder of a south african immigrant. he wanted to come to america so he could provide for his family, and he came to america and got killed. he was an innocent bystander. it wasn t meant for him. it was just a bunch of guys riding around high and drunk just doing stuff that don t even