Baker alleges attack at prison

WEST CHESTER » The man who authorities say assaulted a physically disabled man outside a borough convenience store, throwing what amounted to a “sucker punch” at him, is now claiming that he is the victim of an alleged assault by a corrections officer at the Chester County Prison. The District Attorney’s office said prison officials are investigating the claim.

In a handwritten letter mailed to the Daily Local News last week, Barry Robert Baker Jr. — who identified himself as “the person whom you guys love writing about” — stated that he was as-

saulted by one of the officers assigned to the protective custody block of the prison where he is being housed.

He said one of the officers attacked him while another acted as a “look out,” and that he suffered a variety of injuries, according to the letter dated Aug. 2. They include a separated shoulder, a concussion, and a seizure.

Baker, 29, of Georgetown, Delaware, and formerly of East Fallowfield, is charged with simple assault and related counts in the May attack on a 22-year-old man who has cerebral palsy. Baker is accused of leveling a punch that caught the man square in the face as he stood beside his car outside the 7-11 store on South High Street in West Chester.

Before throwing the punch, Baker had twice mocked the way the man walked, according to police. The episode was captured on video, which went viral on the internet after it was released by county prosecution authorities.

He is also charged with fleeing and eluding police, stemming from a widespread manhunt among local police, Chester County Sheriffs, and U.S. Marshals to take him into custody on warrants issued after his arrest on the assault charge.

Baker’s attorney, Thomas Purl III of Downingtown, acknowledged on Tuesday that his client had complained to him that he was “roughed up” by a corrections officer. He said he had alerted the prosecutor handling the case, Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Morgan, to the accusation. Said First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone, “The District Attorney’s Office was made aware of this incident. We have conferred with Chester County Prison and they have confirmed there is an active misconduct investigation regarding the defendant’s alleged violation of prison rules and regulations.”

A spokeswoman for the prison, county Communications Coordinator Rebecca Brain, said that as of Tuesday, no formal complaint had been received by prison officials from Baker about an alleged assault, so there is no investigation of the officers involved.

Baker wrote the letter to a reporter at the Daily Local News on Wednesday, Aug. 2, and mailed it the following day. The single sheet of paper gives few details about the alleged assault, but contains the last names of the corrections officers who Baker claims committed the assault and aided in it. The Daily Local News is withholding those names because no charges have been filed against them.

“Here is some more news for you,” Baker wrote. “Sunday night around 11:30 p.m. I was attacked by a CO while housed on PC.” He said that he had been questioned by personnel at the prison, and that, “they are doing an inhouse investigation.

“I’ve not been aloud (sic) to call my family since the attack. They won’t let me do anything. I’m still on the same block, same cell, same celly,” the letter states. “I didn’t want this to get swept under the rug. Plz help.”

Purl, who said he had been alerted to the accusations about an assault last week, said he met with Baker at the prison on Sunday. He said Baker’s arm was in a sling.

“He related to me that there was an incident at the prison, and that in the course of that incident he was roughed up,” Purl said in an interview.

According to an account that Purl laid out, Baker had been moved from one cell in the protective custody block to another. When corrections officers conducted a search of the new cell, they said they found a makeshift clothesline made from a torn bed sheet inside — a violation of prison policy. Baker denied that the clothesline was his, but was reprimanded for the offense and had some privileges taken away.

Later when the corrections officers’ shift changed, new officers came into the block and spotted a television in Baker’s cell that he had initially been permitted to keep. Thinking that he had lost the privilege of keeping it, one of the officers attempted to remove the television from Baker’s cell. Baker objected.

When a second officer came into the cell to help retrieve the television, Baker “put up a stink and was restrained,” said Purl. It was then that he apparently suffered a separated shoulder and concussion.

Baker’s case has been the center of considerable media attention since it was announced and a video showing the assault was released to the public by law enforcement authorities.

The video shows a 22-year-old man entering and leaving a convenience store in West Chester in the early morning hours of May 10 when Baker, standing outside the store, without warning punched him in the face. The man was stunned but not seriously injured, and Baker walked from the scene only to be taken into custody by police a short time later.

But while Baker’s actions amounted to little more than second-degree misdemeanor charges and two summary offenses, the circumstances surrounding the alleged assault and the reaction to it turned the matter into the focus of scorn across the country and propelled Baker into a “most wanted” fugitive who now faces even greater criminal liability.

Baker was charged with the assault a short while after the incident, and was scheduled to attend a preliminary hearing in late May. But when the release of the video showing what happened went viral on the internet, Baker opted to abscond. Two warrants were issued for his arrest — on probation violation and delinquent child support charges — and he spent two weeks running from law enforcement’s efforts to track him down, in what District Attorney Tom Hogan, who initially publicized the sucker punch, called “a relentless manhunt.”

Baker, who lived in Delaware with his fiancée at the time of his arrest, was eventually captured at a Uwchlan hotel in June hiding under an assumed name. Because investigators were able to develop evidence that Baker had actively sought to actively avoid turning himself in on the two court warrants that were issued in the wake of the media blitzkrieg he was charged with flight to avoid apprehension. He faces an Aug. 29 hearing in Uwchlan District Court on those charges.