DETROIT (WXYZ) — It's the trial the mother of slain school teacher Natalie Ramstrom has waited for, but Sylvia De Lap fears problems in the case against her daughter's alleged killer will result in what she believes is a killer walking free.
"I thought everything was going good and then it was like being blindsided on the very last day," said De Lap, referring to a mistrial being declared on the second day of testimony last week.
Ramstrom's boyfriend, Efrain Medina, is charged with fatally shooting her in a jealous rage in his apartment in River Rouge back in October 2020.
Ramstrom's body was found by police in Medina's apartment while officers were conducting a welfare check. Plastic garbage bags were found over her body.
When River Rouge police went to FCA in Detroit where Medina was working as an electrician, he managed to elude officers.
And for over a year, police could not locate Medina and thought he had fled to Mexico to hide with relatives. The U.S. Marshals were enlisted to help find Medina and in September 2021, he was arrested in Texas when investigators believe he returned to the U.S.
Last week in Wayne County, Medina finally went on trial on charges of first-degree premeditated murder and felony firearm.
The jury was seated and they heard a full day of testimony. But before any other witnesses could take the stand the second day, Medina's defense attorney motioned for a mistrial after prosecutors revealed that they had been contacted the night before by Michigan State Police.
Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Matthew Makepeace told the court that the call was from the head of MSP's latent print division, indicating that the person who collected the fingerprints from the garbage bags had been audited in a separate case. The results of that audit uncovered problems with how the person collected fingerprints in another case.
"They found that this individual who collected these prints missed prints that should have been collected in other cases," Makepeace told the judge.
MSP reportedly indicated that they had sent a notice of the issue to the River Rouge Police Department. Makepeace said he never received the notice.
And that wasn't the only issue.
River Rouge police said they are missing some video evidence including some photos, body camera footage and video recordings of police interviews with two key witnesses in the case. It went missing when the police department's server crashed.
Medina's defense attorney David Steingold told the judge that police have no explanation for why they did not have a backup when they knew the server and the DVR were malfunctioning.
Ramstrom's mother also wondered the same.
"I'm thinking they should have had it on some kind of disk drive or, you know, thumb drive or whatever they call it," she said. "They should have had that on there because they knew they were having problems."
Judge Catherine Heise said she had to "must most reluctantly" grant the defense motion for a mistrial.
"This court is devastated to have to declare a mistrial after so much work has already been put into this trial," Heise said.
A spokesperson for River Rouge police said they are sad that the issues occurred and feel for the family that their day in court to get closure was snuffed out.
The spokesperson added that their investigators are not done and that forensic experts will hopefully be able to retrieve additional video from the server. He said it should not have happened and they are working to upgrade their system.
The plastic garbage bags will also be reexamined.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Medina's attorneys filed a motion to have the case dismissed "for failure to retain evidence and deliberate withholding of evidence."
Steingold accuses the lead detective of "intentional misconduct."
"Defense attorney Efrain Medina respectfully request this Court DISMISS this case with prejudice because of the deliberate failure to retain and disclose material information to the defense, forcing the defense to request a mistrial," defense attorney Samantha Baker wrote in the motion. "In the alternative, Medina requests that this Court hold an evidentiary hearing to further expand on the alleged technical difficulties of the River Rouge Police Department to determine whether the destruction of evidence was done in bad faith resulting in a denial of Medina’s due process rights."
Ramstrom's mother is maintaining hope for a conviction.
"I know that he did it," she said. "I don't have to even guess about that. I just know."
