By Richard Danielson, Times Staff Writer
Friday, October 15, 2010
TAMPA — Cortnee Brantley and murder suspect Dontae Morris exchanged text messages about hiding Brantley's car after the fatal shootings of two Tampa police officers, federal prosecutors revealed Friday.
"Just lean bak stay loyal," Morris said in a text message to Brantley after the shootings, according to a court document filed in her case.
"Of course," Brantley texted back, authorities say. "Til death do us part."
The court document, known as a bill of particulars, also said that Brantley, 22, sent numerous text messages to others following the officers' deaths early on the morning of June 29.
"U haven't seen me," she wrote, according to authorities. "U don't know where I'm at. ... Please don't tell anyone anything. Erase these messages!"
Morris could be sentenced to death if convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of Officers David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab.
Brantley faces an obscure federal charge known as misprision of a felony, which is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Last week, a federal grand jury issued an amended indictment against Brantley, Morris's sometime girlfriend, saying that on the day the officers were killed, she knew an unnamed felon had a gun and bullets but did not tell authorities.
This week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo told prosecutors to disclose "the affirmative act or acts it contends the defendant allegedly committed that knowingly and willfully concealed" the felony cited in the indictment.
Along with the text messages, prosecutors said Brantley, after seeing Morris, a felon with a loaded gun, at the scene of the fatal shootings, she fled, removing evidence — her car — and disturbing the crime scene in the process.
She also talked with Morris on the phone after the shooting but refused to tell investigators whether Morris was the passenger in her car when she was stopped by police.
Brantley has pleaded not guilty to the amended charge.
Times staff writer Richard Danielson can be reached at Danielson@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3403.
