Foster mother charged in death: Lawyer: It was a tragic accident
Cecil Angel and Jack Kresnak
Detroit Free Press
Oct. 3--A Canton woman who last month pleaded with an emergency operator to send help for her unresponsive 2-year-old foster daughter was charged with the girl's murder Monday, with prosecutors saying the woman told authorities four versions of what happened.
"I'm not talking about different versions of the same story," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said at a news conference announcing the charges against 40-year-old Carol A. Poole.
"Four completely different stories." Poole was charged with felony murder, first-degree child abuse and involuntary manslaughter in the death of Allison Newman, who died at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor after her mother called 911 about 2 a.m. on Sept. 22.
Poole told police that the girl had accidentally hit her head earlier.
An autopsy showed the child suffered a traumatic head injury but could not immediately determine whether it was an accident or intentional.
The woman's lawyer, Mark Satawa, said Monday that Poole is innocent and he was shocked by the charges.
"I think felony murder is such a reach as to be irresponsible on the part of the prosecutor as to be absurd," he said.
He said the child's death was a tragic accident and the charges are based on weak evidence.
He did not provide any additional details about the accident claim.
Worthy, however, said there was no evidence that Poole attended to Allison's injuries, but instead waited four hours before calling 911.
In that call, Poole told the operator that the child was unconscious and not breathing.
"She hit her head yesterday, but she was fine all day," she said, according to the 911 recording.
Poole also could be heard giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the child as the operator talked her through it.
"Oh my God, oh my God -- Are they coming?" the woman asked about paramedics at one point.
The woman's husband was away on a business trip, according to the 911 tape.
"She appeared to be the most perfect of parents on paper but that turned out" not to "be so at all," Worthy said Monday.
Poole was arraigned Monday at 35th District Court in Plymouth before Judge John E. MacDonald who did not grant her a bond.
Satawa said the charges have been influenced by other high-profile cases involving the deaths of young children, referring to Detroit Police Officer Louis Anderson, who has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the Aug. 10 death of 4-year-old Kenneth Thomas.
The child shot himself to death with the officer's handgun.
In another case, no one has been charged in the Aug. 16 beating death of 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge in a foster home licensed through the Lula Belle Stewart Center in Detroit.
"I firmly believe that if my client had not been a foster parent, it would have just been" an accident, Satawa said.
Worthy said that Allison was Poole's first foster child and that she had been placed in the home in January.
Another child, a 3-month-old boy, who was placed in Poole's home in June, was removed Sept. 22.
Allison had been taken from her biological mother in November 2004 and was a temporary ward of the Wayne County Family Court.
Allison's paternal grandfather, Ken Newman of Westland, said his family was glad that charges were brought, but they still have questions about the recent tragedies in Michigan's foster care system.
"The system in place now is clearly not working," Newman said.
"Laws must be changed to protect these innocent children.
All we can do now is continue to pray that justice be done for our granddaughter, Allison."
Contact CECIL ANGEL at 313-223-4531 or angel@freepress.com.
Free Press staff writer Marisol Bello contributed to this report.