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

[newone]

Going back to searches. Was there a previous toddler in the news that died from being left in the car? I can say most of us have search some pretty odd things. I've never search how long will it take an animal to die in a hot car, but I am sure I've looked up statistics over how many. Just last month I looked up deaths in front loader washing machines, argh... I can't remember what made me look it up. I don't even have that type of machine or babies.

I just wonder if this gave rh an idea. He saw some other person not get charged and got an idea. Horrible thinking about about planning something like this.

I get guilty over the smallest things. One day I accidentally passed a stop bus, believe me there is a huge story to this and the driver parks off to the side to wait for the kids and then eventually turns the stop light on, so I was not the only one who did this. But I sure paid attention if that kid came out I waited. Anyways I felt so guilty I just wanted to go turn myself in. I can't even lie with out feeling guilty for life. I can't imagine how others can be ok with not telling the truth. Doesn't the guilt eat away at them?

I am guessing you are talking about researching something right after you hear about a bad accident kind of thing right?? I think that's pretty ''normal'' -- WS is full of people who would do that.

Guilt -- yep nice people feel guilty for sure. Bad guys not so much - they want to save themselves more than anything to save face mostly so they don't look bad in the eyes of others. So sad isn't it.

 

[ScarlettScarpetta]

I have to say, these changes to the recommendations were news to me since it is many years since car seats were a part of my life.

I think this backwards facing until the age of 4 (or whatever the weight limit is) and in the back seat only is a US thing - fairly certain the rules are not that strict in the UK. I can understand not wanting small children facing forwards in the front seat due to the airbags, but it does look very cramped and uncomfortable for children towards the upper end of the age range to be trussed up in the back seat like that. I wonder if it increased the chances of motion sickness as well.....(although I fully except that a bit of puking is by far the lesser evil compared to RTA injury)

No. Actually the US is late getting on board. The swedes have kept kids rfing for decades until 4 or even 5 and then right to a booster. Their rates of child deaths in crashes is much less than ours. I can get it for you but I have not had enough coffee today.

Car crashes kill a lot of kids each year. I have seen kids killed in crashes at low speeds and not restrained and kids restrained right in rollovers and high speed crashes that walk away with a broken limb but nothing more serious.

Keeping your kids restrained as well as you can in a car can save their life. It is really that simple.

 

[CCmakes3]

I'm caught up and out of here for the day. I think I'll check back tomorrow during the court appearance.

Following this thread has honestly become too disheartening to me to continue. Reminds me of this study of a guy who did a doctoral thesis project where he put a paper sack over his head with eyeholes and attended a large college lecture class all semester. As time went on, he behaved completely normally and didn't interact with anyone and didn't do anything at all offensive. By the end of the semester most of the students openly hated him, talked about him, accused him of all kinds of things they had no basis for believing, etc. It's amazing, in this study, when the students wanted to dislike him for the paper sack the justifications they used to make it okay in their minds. And the incredibly wild imaginations they all had!!

Have a good day.

Lol, I fail to see how wearing a paper sack on your head in a college lecture hall is "behaving completely normally." It's an interesting study, but it's certainly not an indictment of the other poor kids in the class. I would have been pretty freaked out when I was 18-22, and as a mother I would advise my child to sit far away from someone like that. It is perfectly normal and healthy to be suspicious of someone who doesn't want to show their face. Humans are inherently wired to look at faces and read them for important social and safety cues. Someone who refuses to participate in that normal human process arouses warranted suspicion, IMO.

 

[newone]

Kids often don't like things that are good for them but teaching them good car safety is easier if you do it right from the beginning.
Rearfacing until at least 2 is safer. It protects their neck and can prevent internal injuries.

Their heads are still so much bigger than their little bodies and when forward facing in a front or side crash they are whipped forward and can cause internal decapitation.

It is not child abuse. That is absurd. That is like saying making them brush their teeth is child abuse.
IMO

bbm

in my case it's hyperbole.....my kids were endowed with long legs -- they would have not been happy....

I realize the laws have changed for the reasons previously stated elsewhere in the threads

 

[AgentFrankLundy]

Anybody else notice that Leanna looks a little like Susan Smith ? They couldn't believe she was capable either

 

[ScarlettScarpetta]

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:

I just want to be clear ( in my best Obama tone )
I am not defending this guy. I am trying to stick to the facts and be neutral until I see all the evidence, just like I was a juror.
Just because there are some of us who are not jumping on the murderer bandwagon, Does not mean that we are defending him. We are looking for the details and weighing them both ways and seeing how it fits best at this point.

There is no emotion in this for me and added emotion just clouds the facts IMO.

At this point I see a horrid mistake. I don't see murder. I don't see premeditation. I don't see anything that makes me think he wanted to get rid of his child.

 

[keeponsearching]

Okay I have given up on backreading - I went back to page 16 or so. Bored reading stuff you all have already hashed out. Would rather be participating in now's conversation

Good morning everyone and :wagon: to all our new members. Glad to have you join us.

I feel guilty about skipping pages. I hope for something new to hash today. We are starting to tear apart things that don't need to be hashed out.
I wake up and read this page and it takes me an hour plus some lol.

 

[2boymomma]

I haven't read through all the pages in this thread, so please forgive me if this was discussed already. If you look at google maps there IS a parking garage near the Treehouse building. It is to the SW about 400 feet. So it is possible he parked in the garage, but this day he decided to park on top.

edited to correct my directions!

 

[CrazytownUSA]

I've had to take a little break... honestly, it just got to be too much. I've been trying to follow along when I can... but it's moving along SO much faster now!!!! :scared:

As for the searches, any parent should KNOW that ANY amount of time is too long for a child to be left in a car, much less a hot car. That would never cross most people's minds to search on. Honestly, think about it. Why would one search on how long it takes for them to die? Why not search on "how not to forget your kids in the back seat"? Or something productive. If you are searching for what temperature it has to be for a child to die in a car, because you have a fear that it could happen to you, search on PREVENTION, because 1 minute is too long to leave a child in a car. Grr. See, I just can't. Add to that it happened soon after they searched? There is no rational explanation.

As an aside, since I know we had this lengthy discussion in the first few threads, not sure if this has been posted yet, but this vet did a little experiment for 30 minutes, with all the windows cracked... temps reached almost 120 on a 94 degree day, with all windows cracked an inch. Heartbreaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbOcCQ-y3OY

 

[eileenhawkeye]

Since I think that Ross thought there would not be any investigation launched, I bet he made even more mistakes than we know of. He probably saw people online talking about how killing your child in a hot car is the perfect way to get away with murder, and figured that LE wouldn't even investigate. I wouldn't be surprised if the daycare did call, and he didn't answer. He apparently did not think LE would look at camera footage or his search records, so why would he think they would check his phone records?

 

[ScarlettScarpetta]

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!

Oh my gosh. Do you know how many pics I have of me or Dh holding our kids where we are not smiling? For all we know it could be 4 am.

Certainly nothing evidentiary or telling here.

 

[Lyra500]

No. Actually the US is late getting on board. The swedes have kept kids rfing for decades until 4 or even 5 and then right to a booster. Their rates of child deaths in crashes is much less than ours. I can get it for you but I have not had enough coffee today.

Car crashes kill a lot of kids each year. I have seen kids killed in crashes at low speeds and not restrained and kids restrained right in rollovers and high speed crashes that walk away with a broken limb but nothing more serious.

Keeping your kids restrained as well as you can in a car can save their life. It is really that simple.

I don't think anyone has suggested not restraining kids in cars have they?

EU regulations recommend forward OR rear facing seats for children weighing 9-18Kg and they do not stipulate rear seat only installation from what I can see. They do stipulate deactivation of the airbag if the child/baby seat is installed in the front.

https://www.gov.uk/child-car-seats-the-rules/using-a-child-car-seat-or-booster-seat

 

[tlcya]

I am okay with the rear facing carseat. Having not seen the carseat I can only assume it was size and age appropriate to Cooper and that Cooper and his seat were situated in the vehicle according to its manufacturer recommendations.

I am not troubled at all by its being rear facing. What troubles me is the fact that where the seat was positioned in the back middle seat would IMO bring Cooper to a point in that rear facing carseat where his head was literally within inches to his father in the front seat.

So adding that to all the otehr things that I have trouble getting past on their own let alone added all together and I just cannot see him forgetting. I just cannot reasonably see how that could happen in a million years.

Things I would still like to know:

who was to pick up Cooper and when that day?

what is the daycare's policy on absent children? Do they call to inquire?

where was Ross to meet friends for drinks?

what was the cause of Ross's heading in the opposite direction of home after work briefly and then heading towards home landing at the pizza place to "discover" Cooper in the backseat?

was it normal for Ross to not use his own vehicle if going off site for lunch? Where did he take lunch that day and with who?

what phone calls was he making at the scene as people attempted to revive his son?

what specifically was searched (wording) and how extensively by both parents? When? What other searches were done?

I have more but those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head.

 

[stmarysmead]

Lol, I fail to see how wearing a paper sack on your head in a college lecture hall is "behaving completely normally." It's an interesting study, but it's certainly not an indictment of the other poor kids in the class. I would have been pretty freaked out when I was 18-22, and as a mother I would advise my child to sit far away from someone like that. It is perfectly normal and healthy to be suspicious of someone who doesn't want to show their face. Humans are inherently wired to look at faces and read them for important social and safety cues. Someone who refuses to participate in that normal human process arouses warranted suspicion, IMO.

CCmakes3....I am nominating your response for Post of the Day!!!

I DID laugh out loud! And people are paying $60,000 a year in tuition somewhere ....to have a professor demonstrate to their offspring...that there is a grave threat of a developing classroom bias against silent, non-reactive loners who come to class everyday with bags over their heads. A new victim group!

This is hilarious!!

 

[otto]

Reflection or photo attached to a lamp?

 

[SStarr33]

I just want to be clear ( in my best Obama tone )
I am not defending this guy. I am trying to stick to the facts and be neutral until I see all the evidence, just like I was a juror.
Just because there are some of us who are not jumping on the murderer bandwagon, Does not mean that we are defending him. We are looking for the details and weighing them both ways and seeing how it fits best at this point.

There is no emotion in this for me and added emotion just clouds the facts IMO.

At this point I see a horrid mistake. I don't see murder. I don't see premeditation. I don't see anything that makes me think he wanted to get rid of his child.

The thanks button is not enough!!

 

[tlcya]

Oh my gosh. Do you know how many pics I have of me or Dh holding our kids where we are not smiling? For all we know it could be 4 am.

Certainly nothing evidentiary or telling here.

I tend to agree, this photo is subjective as will any interpretation of it be. We will all see what we see in this photo and it will all vary viewer to viewer. and really it is evidence of nothing.

I have plenty more stuff to chew on that feels much more telling and relevant ME

 

[SStarr33]

Reflection or photo attached to a lamp?

otto, you are SO good with photos.

 

[JudyBolton]

local suggested there was a food truck that day -- now that's seriously good lunch -

I missed the lunch discussion. Have we gotten new info. that he went out to lunch? Or is this speculation as to what he might have done for lunch? TIA - it's hard to keep up.....

 

[keeponsearching]

Reflection or photo attached to a lamp?

I'll guess I will get on board.

First I thought it was a pic, but I can see the rectangle which would be some type of camera. I first thought it was a cell phone, but who takes pics like that.. SO maybe a regular camera, I know right!! who uses those lol. JUST KIDDING!
Seriously I am not sure if it is the reflection from her taking the pic. But I don't think it was a selfie.