An Indianapolis police officer is accused of deleting messages on the cellphone of an 18-year-old woman who had just committed suicide — messages he had sent her earlier that day regarding their relationship that began through a youth policing program, the Indianapolis Star reports. Officer Francisco Olmos, 31, was charged Thursday with obstruction of justice and computer trespass. A 10-year police veteran, Olmos has been suspended from duty and is being recommended for termination. Olmos was present at the woman’s house when her father discovered her body in 2015. According to a probable cause affidavit, Olmos told investigators he had gone there after growing concerned about her following a phone conversation with the woman earlier in the day and her failure to respond to subsequent calls and text messages. The Marion County coroner’s office ruled her death a suicide, the result of a single gunshot wound to the head.
The arrest two years after the woman’s death was made possible after advances in forensic technology that enabled police to unlock her cellphone and recover deleted messages. Those messages contradicted the timeline Olmos described and also pointed to the woman’s involvement with another officer, Daniel Bullman. The focus of the forensic investigation was the final hours of the woman’s life and the moments immediately after her death, a period when Olmos and Bullman peppered her with phone calls and Snapchat and other social media messages when they couldn’t reach her and, according to court documents, before Olmos erased their electronic footprints.