BATON ROUGE - The District Attorney’s Office says there is no direct evidence that indicates a Baton Rouge city employee stole thousands of dollars from parking meters last year.

The employee, Bryant McConnell, was fired after he was accused of stealing around $15,000 over a period of five months.

The investigation began when bank personnel reported that they had received and stamped four deposit slips, but only had three money bags in the deposit for the March 30, 2015 deposit. While the DA’s Office says there is bank surveillance video of McConnell making the deposit that day, the video does not show how many bags were in the bin that he gave to bank personnel.

According to bank procedure, the coins are counted off-site by another company.

Additional discrepancies with the daily coin deposits were also found by the Finance Division, according to DA Hillar Moore. Investigators said they also learned that the deposit bags were not tamperproof. While the DA’s Office said the Finance Division provided them with charts that reflected a significant drop in parking meter revenue during the man’s employment, a chart from after McConnel was fired showed another significant drop.

With the evidence in front of them, investigators determined that at this time there was insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction against Bryant McConnell. Formal charges can’t be instituted now because it can’t be proven that the deposits weren’t tampered with by someone else. However, the DA’s Office points out that they have four years from the date of the incident to seek prosecution should new evidence present itself.