KPD OFFICER SUSPENDED FOR KEEPING VIALS OF BLOOD FROM CRIME SCENE AT HOME IN FRIDGE
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Knoxville Police Department suspended a 20-year veteran officer for two days without pay earlier this year after an internal investigation found he put vials of blood collected as evidence in a deadly wreck into his home fridge instead of bringing them immediately to KPD’s evidence room, documents reveal.
Travis “Biscuit” Shuler collected the blood from the University of Tennessee Medical Center’s lab on Friday, May 28, 2021, but did not submit it into evidence to be tested until four days later, the documents show.
He told investigators because of “traffic concerns on a Friday,” he brought the vials of blood home with him and put the TBI evidence box containing them into his refrigerator, according to the internal affairs file obtained by 10News through a public records request.
Days later, his wife found the evidence and tried to turn it in at police headquarters downtown before handing it over to Shuler at a gym parking lot in Farragut, she told investigators.
“Officer Shuler regrets his error in judgement and has most certainly learned from the incident,” said his attorney, Don Bosch.
Knoxville Police said internal affairs investigators found the Shuler’s evidence mishandling “appears to be a one-off with no similar previous issues.”
Prosecutors charged Paige Phillips, 30, with vehicular homicide for a May 27 crash on Bruhin Rd. in North Knoxville.
Shuler was called to respond to the scene around 5:30 p.m., the documents show. In the crash report, he wrote that Phillips’ white Chevrolet Malibu drifted left of the centerline while rounding a curve and crashed with a silver Dodge Challenger. The head-on crash killed the driver of the Challenger, 26-year-old Ezekiel Reeves, the report said.
Prosecutors suspected Phillips had been “drinking alcohol and doing Xanax” prior to the crash, the DA’s office wrote in a letter contained within the internal affairs file. Shuler obtained a subpoena for a test of her blood and went to the University of Tennessee Medical Center’s blood lab to pick up the vials on Friday afternoon, he told investigators.
While the district attorney’s office said tests from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation eventually showed no alcohol and trace amounts of drugs in the blood, the sample remained in Shuler’s fridge over the Memorial Day weekend. FULL STORY HERE
