The girlfriend charged in the murder of her Miami police officer boyfriend pleaded her innocence with detectives in tapes of her police interviews obtained by NBC 6 Tuesday.
The tapes, obtained exclusively by NBC 6, show Tiniko Thompson in the police interview room three weeks after prosecutors say she shot and killed military veteran and Miami Police Officer Carl Patrick.
"I'm not a murderer, I'm not a murderer. I didn't kill Carl," she pleads with detectives.
Even before Thompson was charged with second-degree murder in the May death, she exclusively told NBC 6 Investigator Willard Shepard that the shooting of Patrick was a terrible accident.
Thompson claimed Patrick was constantly abusive to her and was so on the morning the gun went off at their Broward home. An accident yes, but not murder, she said.
Thompson cries in the tapes of her interview with the detectives in Pembroke Pines.
"I want to go home to my family, I want to go home. I don't want to be here. I didn't do, I didn't kill Carl," she pleads. "I loved Carl with all my heart. No, no, I can't go to jail for something I didn't do."
In the room alone, she also wonders out loud how she could have already been charged.
"How could they charge me and they haven't, they haven't gotten a statement from me? How can the law charge a person for something when they don't know what's going on. How can they go on just one side of things," she said.
Crime scene photos show the uniform Patrick was wearing when he died, blood spattered across the front of the dark blue shirt. A weapon was also recovered. Before being arrested Thompson told NBC 6 Patrick pulled his gun on her.
"He scared me, I don't know what else to say. He scared me, I feared for my life and I held on and we struggled because I wasn't going to let go," she said in the NBC 6 interview.
And she also indicated to detectives that Patrick was abusive.
"I know he had anger issues and get mad but never could have imagined, I never imagined that," Thompson said. "What are you supposed to do? Somebody put the gun in your face what you gonna do? what would anybody do if that happened?"
Prosecutors said Thompson shot Patrick and rendered no aid, left him to die, and headed to take her belongings from a storage facility.
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"I don't understand this. But then again it's the state of Florida. It's failure," she says in the tapes. "I'm not going to be staying in jail. I can't stay here. I'm not that hard. I'm not a criminal, I'm not a murderer. Lord knows I didn't murder anybody."
Thompson was also worried about where she would be housed in the the Broward County Jail.
"I'm saying open population with people that are true murderers and killers and people that if I have to go to sleep I can't sleep because they may attack me and I have never done anything bad like this ever in my life. I have never experienced anything like this ever in my life," she said.
Thompson did also tell police what she told NBC 6, that she was afraid to come forward to tell her family and others over what was going on inside their home.
She's entered a not guilty plea, saying it was all self defense. She is currently being held without bond.
