Carri Williams: Hana ‘unintentionally’ killed self

Carri Williams: Hana ‘unintentionally’ killed self

Says girl often pretended she couldn’t walk, refused to come inside

Posted: Saturday, August 31, 2013 6:00 am

By Gina Cole

MOUNT VERNON — Carri Williams testified Friday morning that she thinks her adopted daughter Hana Williams was at fault for her own death.

“I believe that she unintentionally killed herself,” Carri Williams said.

The teenage girl collapsed the night of May 11, 2011, after several hours in the backyard of the family’s Sedro-Woolley home during which Carri Williams has said Hana refused to come inside. An autopsy showed Hana died of hypothermia hastened by malnutrition and a stomach condition.

Larry and Carri Williams are now charged with homicide by abuse and first-degree manslaughter in Hana’s death, as well as first-degree assault of the younger boy they adopted from Ethiopia at the same time.

Friday was the final day of witness testimony in the trial. Court reconvenes Wednesday, when Superior Court Judge Susan Cook will instruct the jury on the law and lawyers will give closing arguments before jurors can start to deliberate.

During cross-examination Friday, Carri Williams at times accused deputy prosecuting attorney Rosemary Kaholokula of mischaracterizing what happened in the Williams home and once called her questioning rude.

Shown a family photo and asked to identify its contents for evidence, Carri Williams said: “I recognize that as being all my beautiful children that you ripped apart.”

“Someone ripped them apart,” Kaholokula said.

Without pausing, Carri Williams responded: “You did.”

Several Williams family members, including Carri, have testified that Hana was polite and cooperative when she first arrived at the home but became rebellious more than a year later. Carri Williams said this wasn’t because Hana’s personality changed, but because she was starting to show her true colors.

The Williamses sought no help from the adoption agency.

“It wasn’t necessary,” Carri Williams said.

She said she thought Hana was healthy, despite drastic weight loss that left the teenage girl, whose exact age is in question, at about 80 pounds. Hana lost 30 pounds in the year before she died, according to her medical records.

The adopted son lost weight, too. The boy weighed 53 pounds when he arrived in the U.S. in 2008, gained some weight but then dropped to 50 pounds by 2010, medical records show. He grew 2 inches taller in that time.

Hana’s autopsy photos show her ribs and collarbone jutting out. Carri Williams confirmed Hana looked thin in those photos, but said she had not seen that before because she rarely saw her daughter without the modest clothes every Williams family member wore.

“She looked totally different from the minute she was alive to the minute she was dead,” Carri Williams said. “… I never had any concerns about the health of my daughter.”

Carri Williams said when she first saw Hana lying face-down in the dirt that May night, she thought she was pretending until she rolled her over.

Hana had removed her clothes — a sign of hypothermia that Carri Williams said she didn’t recognize. When she and her then-12-year-old daughter couldn’t carry Hana, Carri Williams put a sheet over the girl before asking her oldest son to help.

Modesty wasn’t the only reason for the sheet, she said. “Her care was important to me, just as much as my son seeing her naked,” she said.

Hana had not eaten her dinner, which that night was cold leftover spaghetti, Carri Williams said. That was unusual because Hana usually ate “every last bite” of her meals, she said.

But other events of the evening weren’t unusual, Carri Williams said.

Hana had been stumbling around the property, throwing herself to the ground, bloodying her hands and knees and hitting her head on the cement patio. Carri Williams testified she thought Hana was doing it on purpose because she had “acted like she couldn’t walk” before.

“I couldn’t stand to see her do that to herself,” Carri Williams said, so she went inside and checked on Hana every five to 10 minutes from a door or window, imploring her to come in the house.

At no point did she call a doctor, she said, explaining it did not occur to her there might be a problem because this “was not new behavior” for Hana.

“I did the best I could with what I knew,” she said.

— Reporter Gina Cole: 360-416-2148, gcole@skagitpublishing.com, Twitter: @Gina_SVH, facebook.com/byGinaCole