GA - Suspicion over heat death of Cooper, 22 mo., Cobb County, June 2014, #7

[gitana1]

~snipped by me for a most hilarious typo

try to never touch on important thugs, either. The unimportant ones, well, I'll touch on them a little lmbo

Oh my goodness. I just caught that and edited!! It autocorrects to that a lot!!

 

[gitana1]

that car seat may as well be in the front seat ..... think that JRH needs a guide dog and cane ..... how could he possibly say he didn't see child

((don't even want to discuss aromas thanks))

Good point.

Just wanted to jump in with this real quick so I don't forget. But I was recently told by a fireman that when you hear a car alarm going off over and over again it's usually because someone left their dog in the car and the motion detector is setting off the alarm. Just an FYI for safety if you hear a car alarm going off over and over again somewhere, check the car!! Don't just get annoyed and ignore it.

Sorry to post this way out of order but I just wanted to remind people.

Also we have a responsibility to do what an earlier poster mentioned. That's due diligence as people. When we park in parking lots from now on and are walking into the stores keep an eye out for car seats inside cars and just glance to see if you see a child in the car. Many parents think leaving a sleeping baby for a few minutes in a car while they run in to grab something in a store is "faster and easier" than dealing with getting the child out and dragging them around the store. It's a hassle to them. So let's all do our part.

:seeya:

I never would've thought of that. I will now. Thank you.

The problem with this, is that most people who defend forgetting your kid in the car will say that in his mind the child was in daycare. He could have thought of the child all day and even have spoken to his wife about him but if he thought he was in daycare it wouldn't have registered.

I'm intrigued by the lengths to which people will go to in order to defend this guy in this case. It's very telling to me that even with an arrest for murder people just don't want to hold him responsible. And the reason they don't is because of all the cases that happened before where the others were not arrested. When you only have a 50% conviction rate and you have men averaging 3 years in prison for doing this, then you are setting up a situation that is very dangerous to children.

This is why I believe that in every case the parent should be charged for negligence. Not murder but negligence. Yes people forget. We all forget things as parents, we all make mistakes as parents. Every single parent on this thread has some very bad and dangerous thing they did at one point with their child, either via laziness or desperation that could have resulted in the death of their child.

I remember one time leaving my children home alone when they were very little, during a severely cold snow storm and running up the street to pick up milk and cereal and diapers. I had left them for about 10 minutes and ran the entire way. They were both sitting in front of the television and I figured, 'it's safer to leave them here in this cozy warm apartment instead of dragging them out into the cold." They were watching morning cartoons and sitting on the couch. When I got back my 3 year old was in the bathroom with a can of shaving cream, a face full of shaving cream and a razor getting ready to go shave. lease:lease: I'd like to say I never did it again, but I did do it again throughout the winter. I just put them both in their cribs before I left again. I was a single mom and had absolutely no baby sitting help and sometimes I took risks that I shouldn't have. I understand how it can happen.

However, it is negligence to do such things. It just is, and forgetting is not something that should ever be excused with a baby. When we start seeing an increase of parents "forgetting" their children in situations that will prove FATAL to the child, we don't sit back in sympathy and say "Oh well ship happens!!" We step up and say this cannot happen, it's too dangerous.

We need to raise the bar in safety, not lower it in sympathy. So parents who have small children should do things to make sure they don't forget their child. Even just writing on the side window of the car in grease paint, BABY!!! is one tiny thing that parents can do. And we shouldn't need car manufacturers and other people to solve that problem for parents. Parents need to be diligent about not ever putting their child in this type of situation. It's their responsiblity.

:twocents::twocents:

Do to think you should've been charged and gone to jail? What would be worse for your kids? Is the possible deterrence with it? I don't know myself.

I do believe we are an over protective, nannying society with the attitude that anything but constant, 100% perfect vigilance is criminal. I dont agree with that.
Because I don't believe anyone is a perfect parent or can be. I think every god parent makes terrible mistakes on occasion that their kids at risk of harm. And I think not allowing any risk of harm is stunting and debilitating to children.

Accidents happen and always will, to The best of us. That's to price of being human and allowing children to grow and take risks. Not every thing parents do that exposes Kids to risk should merit criminal charges. And no parent can ever eliminate all risk. Never.

 

[Chewy]

Good point.



I never would've thought of that. I will now. Thank you.



Do to think you should've been charged and gone to jail? What would be worse for your kids? Is the possible deterrence with it? I don't know myself.

I do believe we are an over protective, nannying society with the attitude that anything but constant, 100% perfect vigilance is criminal. I dont agree with that.
Because I don't believe anyone is a perfect parent or can be. I think every god parent makes terrible mistakes on occasion that their kids at risk of harm. And I think not allowing any risk of harm is stunting and debilitating to children.

Accidents happen and always will, to The best of us. That's to price of being human and allowing children to grow and take risks. Not every thing parents do that exposes Kids to risk should merit criminal charges. And no parent can ever eliminate all risk. Never.

Yes I do if my children had died. If my children had died I would have gone down and sat in a police car, walked in and pled guilty and prepared to spend the rest of my life in jail. I wouldn't be trying to "get off" because I would feel so guilty. And I don't necessarily want parents to "go to jail" I want them to be PROSECUTED which is not necessarily the same thing.

I hear from people when I make this point, that it is a waste of tax payer money but I don't think a child's life isn't worth that amount of money and I believe that if parents were charged it would save future lives.

The main difference that I have in my judgment about forgetting kids in a car is that it is certain death. That's really what I can't wrap my mind around when people make excuses. There is no possible way for a child to survive being strapped physically into a car seat and left to bake in a car. Maybe the child could struggle out of the car seat but a baby is certain death. There's absolutely no way for them to survive, bar a stranger busting in the window. In my case, there was a very small risk that they could have died. But in a car like this there is virtually no chance of survival.

That's why I keep pointing out that it's wrong to extend sympathy to the parent for forgetting. They should not at all forget. They should make sure they don't forget because it is certain death.

Think about how many other things in life are "certain death."

A child in a pool has the possibility of staying afloat or swimming to the edge and hanging on. Even a child in a pool filled with Great White Sharks has the possibility of not being attacked and staying afloat and swimming to the edge of a pool.

There is simply no chance of survival for a child forgotten for hours in a car. Compare it to leaving your child dangling from the Empire State Building and their only hope of survival is to hold on for four hours. It's impossible. It is certain death.

When these stories happen we quickly skip away from the details of the suffering of the dead child. Even the video I've seen on it, glosses over the reality of what happens to these children in the car. We don't want to punish the parents more by going over the gruesome details. But think of the little girl who pulled out all her hair before dying? It is an absolute torturous death that goes even beyond the deaths in concentration camps. How in the world do we press a fast forward on this and skip to coddling the "hapless grieving parents" instead of realizing what the child has endured?

What parent would leave a child to endure such torture. If that torture was at the forefront of their mind, they would NOT leave the child in the car. They would take every precaution NOT to forget. This is why RH's web searches are so unnerving.

But because so many parents have had "near misses" based on their own negligence as a parent, they want to skip past the details and suggest the parent has "suffered enough."

 

[stmarysmead]

There are many excellent details in this thread as I read this early AM. Thanks to all you sleuthers!

First, the fact that the Father actually forgot him in ONE minute....not even 5 minutes....when he turned in the wrong direction...toward work, not the daycare. This is beyond ridiculous for a functioning adult. Even using the "reasonable man" theory...no one "forgets" a beloved child in one minute. When he made that turn away from Daycare...this tragedy began. THAT moment!

Second, the video of the interior of the car was very telling. Add to that, that Ross had to lean in to place something on the passenger side seat. Can he argue that he was still clueless? Well, again...do they own two car seats? If not, the presence of that big hulking object should have alerted him immediately unless he was in some hours long stupor. And children, clean or dirty, have a "scent." All baby powder and lotion and the scent of those paper diapers. Or...fecal matter and urine.

One post here mentions coworkers seeing him google....THAT very day....about animals dying in hot cars. Another post mentioned that he went to the car after 2 and a half hours. Then , of course, we find out that he walked to lunch.

I'm not sure I believe my own theory here...but what if he turned the wrong way coming out of Chik-Fil-a....and maybe he was late and figured...hey, I'll leave the kid in the car and take him over in an hour or so. He'll just sleep, blah, blah.

Just to reassure himself, he googles how long he can leave him. But on that first trip down, he finds him dead. He then has all day to try to figure out how to CYA. That would explain the reduction in the current charge to 2nd degree. It wasn't intentional...just hideously negligent.

One hole in this theory is the previous searches that may be on the home computer. There are probably lots more holes.

As to motive, do we really believe that "motive" has to fit into our favorite generic mold every single time? No one gets murdered unless there is a motive of sex, money, revenge...those biggies? Every day we read of someone snapping over something trivial...after a long buildup of quiet resentment. Sometimes the "buildup" is never even noticeable to others. "I had no idea you were so upset when I did such and such."

Some people seethe to themselves but keep on their happy mask at church and work. You would have to have access to the inner workings of their mind to perceive any "motive." So when someone posts, "until I can find a motive, this person is innocent to me."....in many cases, they are setting an impossible bar to reach.

There is a rather well-known poem called "Richard Corey" that some of you may be familiar with. It is about a man of wealth and stature who was admired (and envied) by everyone in town. It ends like this...

"So on we worked, and waited for the light...and went without the meat and cursed the bread.

And Richard Corey, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet in his head."

Very often, it is just not possible to every understand another person's emotional baggage, world-view, or "motive."

 

[lillybell]

The more details that come out here, the more guilty he is looking.

We now know he left the building to go out on his lunch hour, how far away from his office was the car parked?
Do we know if he went to the car at the start of his lunch or after?
Also, hearing his journey was just minutes from breakfast visit to workplace, there is no way he could of forgotten cooper in that time!
He had just eaten with him, must have interacted with him, and put him back in his car?.

I also can't believe cooper would be sitting in the car not making a sound at all. If he fell asleep after been put back in the car to travel to work, he would be in a very light sleep as it was a very short journey, you would think when dad pulled up in parking space cooper would wake up as the car engine stopped. That's what mine used to do, the min the vehicle stopped, ping! They'd wake up. X

 

[DesertDreamer]

He was hungry again? ate breakfast at home then ate at Chick-fil a again at 9:00-9:30, then ate lunch at 11:30?

(I'm catching up)

Or did he eat at CFA so he wouldn't have to eat lunch? To have a valid reason for not getting in the car and driving somewhere for lunch. He could say, I already ate, I wasn't hungry and decided to skip lunch and work.

If he did drive to lunch, he'd have noticed Cooper sooner and it would have been harder to fool people, especially if he wanted to do the reveal later. So was eating at CFA his way to work around this issue?

I wonder if he usually ate before he left home in the morning and/or if he usually ate before work (right before, like on that day). If not, if he normally waited until lunch to eat something for the day and drove somewhere to do it and he changed his routine, well, that just adds onto the list of things that are off about this case. It shows planning on his part, to eat before hand so he'd have a valid reason to tell people why he didn't drive somewhere and notice his kid was in the back seat sooner, when he should have given his usually routine.

Edit: Or nevermind?
It seems someone found LE sources saying, "Two different law enforcement sources tell FOX 5 during that lunch hour Mr. Harris left his work property to go out to lunch, but didn’t take his car."
[ame="http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10688534&postcount=155"]Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - GA - Suspicion over heat death of Cooper, 22 mo., Cobb County, June 2014, #7[/ame]
So that sort of negates my idea. Hmmmm.

 

[katydid23]

So later today we will get some clarifications. Cannot wait.

 

[lillybell]

I read on a blog about the case that his coworkers were actually the ones who noticed him doing the searches for "dogs in hot cars" that day. They thought it was creepy, naturally. Can't link to the source as it's a blog, but yes, I'm sure his coworkers would not be thrilled to have him back.

Wow, if that's right then that really is creepy! I wonder how that came about, I wonder if anyone asked him what he was searching that for? Interesting to know what he said. No wonder he told the police straight away about the search on the PC, he would know that someone would bring that to the police attention! X

 

[CHERIE.T]

The more details that come out here, the more guilty he is looking.

We now know he left the building to go out on his lunch hour, how far away from his office was the car parked?
Do we know if he went to the car at the start of his lunch or after?
Also, hearing his journey was just minutes from breakfast visit to workplace,there is no way he could of forgotten cooper in that time!
He had just eaten with him, must have interacted with him, and put him back in his car?.

I also can't believe cooper would be sitting in the car not making a sound at all. If he fell asleep after been put back in the car to travel to work, he would be in a very light sleep as it was a very short journey, you would think when dad pulled up in parking space cooper would wake up as the car engine stopped. That's what mine used to do, the min the vehicle stopped, ping! They'd wake up. X

bbm
According to Nancy G. the drive from CFA to dad's work place = 1 min. 20 seconds.

 

[JusticeSeeker6]

Hi all, just registered but I've been lurking around here over 2 years now :blushing:

The main thing in this case that has me scratching my head right now, is the comment from police that Cooper may not have even been in the car at 9am. I have been wracking my brain trying to guess how they are thinking he could have ended up left in that car. I feel this is perhaps the most puzzling statement (of many) to come out so far.

The whole thing is baffling right now though, very eager to see what happens on Thursday.

I've seen a lot of confusion on this and wanted to add my 2 cents. I believe the confusion lies in the fact that it was first reported that JRH was at work at 9:00 and Cooper was in the car, at Home Depot, at that point. The time JRH went to work was later changed to 9:30 (or around there) which means at 9:00 Cooper may have been in CFA and not in the car. I think at the point they said they couldn't confirm that he was in the car at 9:00 they were still investigating the timeline as to CFA and what time JRH started working. JMO

 

[Chewy]

bbm
According to Nancy G. the drive from CFA to dad's work place = 1 min. 20 seconds.

And this is after he physically put the child BACK in the car seat. If he had just gone through drive through it would be different. But there is no way he forgot that he put his son back in the car. He is not a slender man, getting a kid situated in a car seat would mean that he had leaned inside and that isn't exactly an easy and foregettable task. I'm 5 11 and a pretty "big girl" and I'd be sweating and breathing heavy right after doing that on a hot morning. So pahleeeze...he forgot. :facepalm::facepalm:

 

[CHERIE.T]

And this is after he physically put the child BACK in the car seat. If he had just gone through drive through it would be different. But there is no way he forgot that he put his son back in the car. He is not a slender man, getting a kid situated in a car seat would mean that he had leaned inside and that isn't exactly an easy and foregettable task. I'm 5 11 and a pretty "big girl" and I'd be sweating and breathing heavy right after doing that on a hot morning. So pahleeeze...he forgot. :facepalm::facepalm:

omg I know! No one forgets in that time frame.... 1 min 20 seconds!

 

[stmarysmead]

On many of these true crime shows they refer to the "Mormon Divorce." A Mormon divorce refers to the way some Mormons feeling they can't get a divorce will actually murder their spouse. It's odd how many murders happen in the Mormon church IMO.

Very religious people are often not very sincere in their beliefs but feel indoctrinated into the faith and simply can't see a way out of their lives without a miraculous intervention that changes everything.

Most people would say "But surely murder is worse than divorce???" but time and time again they find that the person just could not figure out a way out of what they didn't want anymore and decided they'd try to get away with murder. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. But not everyone is strong enough to stand up to their beliefs.

Their religious convictions present a sense of motive to me. Her difficulty in getting pregnant coupled with him taking medication that actually reduces sperm count is worth looking into. He could have been apprehensive about having children and then God gives them a miracle. And then life turns out to be much harder than he realizes and he realizes economically he's doomed if he tries to get a divorce and walk away.

Death of a child is a prime reason for divorce, no one would blame them if they did. In addition there are countless stories on the internet of people making hundreds of thousands of dollars from donations from people who care. (Just look at the recent KFC story and the School Bus driver from a few years ago) This man and his family had campaigns raising money almost immediately. So who needs a life insurance policy anyway?

Sherri Coleman's husband who worked for some televangelist...comes to mind as well.

 

[Chewy]

If you google school bus driver money raised "Let's Given Karen a vacation" This is how much she received.

$703,168 USD

RAISED OF $5,000 GOAL

 

[Patience]

Don't know if this article has been posted yet but it's a good one.

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/01/cooper-harris-parents-questions-details-facebook-you-ask
Even with new details emerging over the weekend in the case of Cooper Harris, the Georgia toddler who died nearly two weeks ago after having been left in a hot car all day, there seem to be more questions right now than answers.

Police have charged Cooper's father, Justin Ross Harris, with murder and second-degree child cruelty in the boy's death. He has pleaded not guilty in Cooper's death, and says he forgot to drop the 22-month-old off at daycare on his way to work at a Home Depot office. Cooper's mother, Leanna Harris, spoke publicly about the case for the first time at her son's funeral Saturday, around the same time authorities revealed that both parents admitted to making Internet searches about child deaths inside vehicles prior to the incident.

So, at this point, what are your biggest questions about the case? What has alarmed you most? We asked on our Facebook page, and more than 1,000 of you responded:

New to the case? Catch up here

 

[PigPong]

bbm
According to Nancy G. the drive from CFA to dad's work place = 1 min. 20 seconds.

I don't buy it only should take 1 min 20 sec. Not with traffic on a weekday morning, even if it was past 9.

 

[Patience]

http://www.news.com.au/world/friend...s-a-proud-parent/story-fndir2ev-1226974474597

There is a pic of dad with Cooper on his chest and dad looks uncomfortable to me. Can someone post pic for discussion please?

IMHO

 

[Chewy]

I posted it before myself and commented that especially regarding Coopers position, it's usually a type of moment that elicits tenderness in the parent. I just don't see it in his father's face. <<Bias

Going to see if it's the picture I was thinking about.- Edit....yep!

 

[believe09]

http://www.news.com.au/world/friend...s-a-proud-parent/story-fndir2ev-1226974474597

There is a pic of dad with Cooper on his chest and dad looks uncomfortable to me. Can someone post pic for discussion please?

IMHO

I see what you mean, but I think it might be due to it being a "selfie."

A totally superficial observation-what is with the manscaping on his face in his booking photo? (Is that his booking photo or DL?) I must be old fashioned but he looks unprofessional.

 

[believe09]

Holy Cow, Cooper was beautiful.