GA - Suspicion over heat death of Cooper, 22 mo., Cobb County, June 2014, #3

[gngr~snap]

[email protected]

https://plus.google.com/115535115215902896690

So sad. He has the sonogram of baby Cooper, on YouTube . It's connected to his gmail acct, it's over 8 min long.
I have the link, but since mom is carrying baby Cooper I need to wait for permission to post. It may violate TOS.
MOO

 

[stmarysmead]

Here's something I am puzzled about....did they own TWO car seats?

Those car seats are not inexpensive and many young families have two cars but one car seat. So the parent transporting the child, if they do indeed "take turns"....has to move the car seat to his specific car. The presence of the car seat...taking up a sizable part of the back seat...is then a big clue...that YOU have the child with YOU!

How did he lock the car, facing it...or come back at noon and not have the sight of that car seat remind him...that HE had the child that day? In a small SUV, these car seats are not inconspicuous anywhere.

In any event, if they took turns, then he has the physical act of actually inserting the car seat from her car to his...then strapping in his son...then driving, then removing him at the breakfast stop, then strapping him in again, then driving a just few more minutes...and, oops, forgetting.

Then he approaches the car again later in the day. Even if he does not see the child, you cannot miss the car seat in a small SUV. Then he actually enters the car and begins to drive home. I wonder if he had to back out of the parking place? Turn your head or look in the rear view...there is the car seat! Again, how does the presence of the car seat just blow past him?

I am having trouble with a father being this distracted under these circumstances for this long.

 

[jmcgladr]

l

I know nothing ((up front folks nothing nada nix)) but do you think a person with ADHD could forget kid in 4 minutes

No, ADHD makes you distractible, but it doesn't make you forget your kids! Especially when you JUST had breakfast with them a few minutes before. It's a pretty common disorder, so if everyone with ADHD forgot their kids in cars or any other place, I think you'd see a lot more headlines like this - while in reality, child fatalities from being left in cars are actually miniscule. Tragic, but extremely uncommon.

 

[stmarysmead]

I am also curious as to whether the child was asleep or awake when they stopped for that breakfast.

I agree that "these things happen"...but I wonder how often they happen when the interval between a stop and the destination is short and the child is awake?

Are there many cases prior to this ...where parents "forget" a babbling toddler after just having physically replaced him in the car seat shortly before? I would like to know the frequency of that type of "forgetting."

I mean there is "forgetting."

Then there is "forgetting after a very short interval."

Then there is "forgetting after a very short interval when you have just had physical interaction with the child."

Then there is "forgetting after a very short interval when you have just had a physical interaction with the child and he is awake WHEN FORGOTTEN.

How often are all those circumstances present in a valid case of innocent "forgetting?" Id like to know some statistics.

How often do people "forget" a dog in a hot car...that they leashed, unleashed, and they have just walked moments ago...THAT is also yipping or barking or just moving about in the car?


Whether the Internet search is true or not, this alone IMO is suspicious.

 

[Chewy]

That's an interesting point stmarysmead. The story thus far has been that he went to breakfast with his son, but if he just went through a drive through and the child had fallen asleep it could be that he just blanked and forgot him.

But I agree with others, there had to have been something completely obvious for the cops to arrest him the way he did. Otherwise the backlash from "arresting the poor parent" would definitely be coming. We saw the immediately support system out there.

So that's why, in an effort at trying to figure out what happened, I've used that as the litmus test of the whole issue. What would the cops have seen that immediately told them the man was lying right then and there.

The only thing I can think of is that he said something that indicated he heard the child alive in the car and the cops knew he was lying because the kid had been dead for hours.

The other thing, if he is innocent, is perhaps he whooped and hollered and slipped up by saying things like "What have I done, I've murdered my child! I killed him I killed him!!" just in an outburst of anguish. Maaaaaybe they had to arrest. I really really doubt it though.

 

[Sonya610]

I have said this a lot of times but it nags at me concerning the smell.... So many other parents that lost children to hyperthermia... Not one mentioned a smell. They all aimed they had no idea the child was still in the car.

Just now catching up on this case, I read the articles but not all the comments so not sure if this has been posted many times before.

The news video I saw said the officers stated the "car reeked" which is why they questioned the fathers story about not realizing he was in the car right away.

That doesn't necessarily mean it was from the decomposition of the body (I wouldn't expect the body to reek within just 2-3 hours or however long since the time of death, flys may be able to pick up a scent immediately after death but humans can't).

The child could have vomited and/or lost control of his bowels/bladder and I would expect that COULD cause the car to reek after a few hours in the sun.

 

[Sonya610]

Any word on if the parents had a life insurance policy on this child?

 

[BrownRice]

Until further evidence, I am going to ignore the computer search, and the smell in the car, and the 'choking' declaration. I am not sure of any of that anymore.

However, the obit declares that little Cooper was very verbal, especially while riding in the car. He would say " Hello red car, goodbye red car..." So now we know that Cooper was probably babbling and NOT SILENT, during that 5 minute ride to Daddy's office.

I just cannot believe that Dad could have forgotten Cooper was in the car, in that brief amount of time. Especially since Coop was wide awake, had just eaten, and was looking forward to seeing his friends. He would have been talking at some point during that time. Especially when the car stopped. He was a very verbal, social, smart boy.

I completely agree with you. And he wasn't an infant, he most likely would not have fallen asleep in the car immediately after eating breakfast. Nap time probably would have been early afternoon. Tots this age are full of chatter in the morning.

 

[laceandruffles]

I can't believe they would actually want a distraught man calling his wife when he is in that kind of shape, to tell her that her son is dead. You would think the cops might have tried to stop him from doing that until he calmed down a bit. Maybe he really wanted to tell her right away, but anybody with a heart should have tried to stop him. Having said that, I don't think anything about the phone call points to guilt or innocence.

I find it odd too that LE would want her informed of her child's death via phone call. Death notifications are a part of police work. I figure she had been calling him. Maybe even called while LE was on scene, he was instructed to call back and tell her what's going on. Maybe she was looking for Cooper. At this time, we know little about how and why the phone call was made, its all speculation on our part.

 

[Chewy]

But we don't know that. We don't know he wouldn't have fallen asleep. We don't know anything about the way the child behaved in the car seat at all. Just because everyone else has different experiences doesn't mean it has anything to do with this kid. I don't get why people constantly put up their own different life experiences as a way of examining evidence in a case.

If he didn't get out of the car at the chikfila he could have forgotten him in the back of the car. It IS possible that the child fell asleep. It is possible that there wasn't a horrible smell. It's possible.

That's why I like to focus on the facts and the things we can see as evidence.

Even the google search, say he suddenly remembers in the middle of the morning he's left his son in the car! He immediately googles it because it takes seconds and he's an IT guy, is it too long? He thinks it's too late and his son is already dead and he googles for a second just to check. Maaaybe they can argue it that way.

So what is it that made the cops immediately arrest him?

I agree with the other posters who point out that in all the previous stories we've read about hyperthermia, we haven't seen any statements about a reeking odor in the car. So I'm not sure that this is a clue yet.

I also think the cops are holding back in revealing details because they don't want him to have time to come up with an excuse for what he did. A defense attorney's job is going to be to break it down and make it look like it was an innocent coincidence.

If he DID take the child out of the car at Chik-fila, then he really has no reasonable argument that he 'forgot him" going back to the office. But I'd need to see evidence that he took him out of the car at the restaurant.

 

[CCmakes3]

I totally agree. He did not pull that out of thin air. There was a reason he was given that information. Kinda like this is off the record-code for don't reveal my name but...

Thanks so much for sharing that information you have on the reporter. I appreciate it. It's really best just to scroll on by some of the posts.

I believe you too, Judy, and I believe Mr. Travis. We have a local investigative reporter in our city too and he is one of the most trusted people in the community. I can't imagine he would put his reputation on the line just to publish something that was "sensational." Journalists get a bad rap but I really believe that the local guys want to serve their communities with integrity. I have never seen otherwise with a LOCAL journalist. To lump them in with the likes of the "paparazzi" is simply not fair.

 

[Chewy]

I believe you too, Judy, and I believe Mr. Travis. We have a local investigative reporter in our city too and he is one of the most trusted people in the community. I can't imagine he would put his reputation on the line just to publish something that was "sensational." Journalists get a bad rap but I really believe that the local guys want to serve their communities with integrity. I have never seen otherwise with a LOCAL journalist. To lump them in with the likes of the "paparazzi" is simply not fair.

Journalists very often overhear things and publish them without verifying them. There is very little done to a journalist who makes a statement. And his butt is covered by saying "someone at the scene told me X" because this isn't an actual quote but just repeating information. It's very rare for the someone to sue or go after someone who published the wrong information.

The reporters just segue into the new information like "Breaking news now reveals that previous reports of the father looking up information on the computer were not true.'"

Consider the young Arabic boy who was accused of being the Boston Marathon bomber. Tons of good reporters splashed that teenagers picture all over the news accusing him of being a terrorist. NOTHING was done to them.


When it comes down to taking the risk by "getting the scoop first" the reporters ALWAYS take the risk. Then they act like they had nothing to do with the rumor

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/hs-track-star-speaks-didn-article-1.1320766

Even after the FBI cleared the pair, Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said, “We stand by our story.”

“The image (of the two) was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported,” Allan said in a statement. “We did not identify them as suspects.”



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/hs-track-star-speaks-didn-article-1.1320766#ixzz35w4TOb1s

 

[hikerchick]

Diaper bag or other thing for daycare in the front seat would be another one.

It just occurred to me that there might not have been a diaper bag. At both of the facilities I used, each kid had a cubby-you only brought spare clothes or diapers as your kid was getting low. At 22 months he probably still used a sippy cup from home, but that could have been kept in several places in the car. If Cooper held it himself it wouldn't have been visible to be a reminder for the dad.

Not sure if it matters or not, just wanted to throw that out there.

 

[CCmakes3]

The witness stated the child appeared to be in an "unnatural" position with his legs in the air as if he was still seated in the car seat, although he had been placed on the ground. His was not supine, indicating an unnatural stiffness to his limbs.

Sounds a lot like "Rigor" to me.

Also, another person stated that the witness said the child appeared sweaty and tired. That is not the case. The witness stated the child looked as if he had been in a swimming pool, wet, (obviously from sweat) and was blue/ grey complexion. There was nothing about "tired". The implications were that Cooper looked dead.

Thank you, I thought that "tired" sounded like a new one I hadn't heard initially. (Another "rumor" thrown into the mix!)

 

[lightlady]

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/06/26/justin-ross-harris-cooper-search-animal-hot-car-die

The origin of the comment about him looking tired from a witness.

 

[momshrink]

I remember it being said that Justin called up his wife on his cell phone and told her that Cooper was dead. Now, if I thought this was an accident, I would say that he was just overcome w/ emotion, but since this definitely seems premeditated, does anyone else think that the call was to further hurt Mom?

Bingo! I absolutely agree! I think he wanted to hurt Mom and killing Cooper was the ultimate way of hurting Mom. JMO, MOO, IMO

 

[CCmakes3]

I think it would happen mostly to people without ADHD. People with ADHD have things cross their minds all the time - like a thought storm. If they forget in 4 minutes, it crosses their mind in another 15 minutes so no harm done- the child would be rescued safe and sound.

In my experience, this happens to people who have really great focus. They can switch focus and then the thought of daycare never crosses their mind for hours.

I don't agree with you on a lot of things, Jeanna, but this is an good point. I hadn't thought of it in this way. Not 100% SURE I agree, but it would be an interesting thing for psychologists to research.

 

[Sonya610]

Even the google search, say he suddenly remembers in the middle of the morning he's left his son in the car! He immediately googles it because it takes seconds and he's an IT guy, is it too long? He thinks it's too late and his son is already dead and he googles for a second just to check. Maaaybe they can argue it that way.

Uhhhh....no I don't think they can argue it that way. He googles when he realizes the kid is in the car, decides the kid is "probably already dead" therefore he just goes about his work day, makes some calls, works on a couple of projects and decides the body in the car can wait until after work?

 

[popsicle]

I find it odd too that LE would want her informed of her child's death via phone call. Death notifications are a part of police work. I figure she had been calling him. Maybe even called while LE was on scene, he was instructed to call back and tell her what's going on. Maybe she was looking for Cooper. At this time, we know little about how and why the phone call was made, its all speculation on our part.

Or maybe she had been calling him all day and he wasn't answering his phone. He figured now was probably a good time.

 

[CCmakes3]

I don't disagree for the most part. For me its always a source of anxiety in a way because I feel like or assume I could easily do something like this because I'm ADHD. As a result when it comes to caring for my animals and children I'm hyper alert so it prob wouldn't. That said not everyone isn't self aware and busy or overwhelmed people can easily have lapse in memory and never realize they forgot something as big as dropping their kid off. After reading the piece in the Washington Post and the kidsand cars site I think you are right in saying most times its people who are typically well focused but something breaks there routine. Because they have always been able to rely on their memory it never crosses their mind they didn't do something so important.

Agreed. I think it is a certain personality type that is vulnerable to doing this. Not necessarily an inferior personality, as they have definite strengths over people like myself, but I think there's a reason why some of us can honestly KNOW that this would never happen to us.