Parents wake to slaying's reality
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Posted on 04/18/2002 3:26:31 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Parents wake to slaying's reality
Siblings who admitted killing brother, 6, to remain in custody
04/18/2002
As their longest Tuesday night stretched into Wednesday, the sad tasks piled up for Michael and Rita Carr.
They needed time to pull together criminal defenses for their oldest children. There was the funeral to arrange for their youngest, 6-year-old Jackson. In their spare moments, they asked God to help them understand.
"Obviously, no one can imagine what they are going through," said attorney Donna Winfield, who represents the Carrs' 15-year-old daughter. "They lost their whole family in one day."
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Jackson was found in a shallow grave in a wooded area behind the family's Lewisville home about 1 a.m. Tuesday after police said his siblings confessed to killing him. The boy died of a perforation of the jugular vein because of a stab wound. Asphyxiation was a contributing factor in his death, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner's office.
Dan Hagood, the attorney for the 10-year-old, said that during the time he saw the children Wednesday morning, they were "very upset."
"They are obviously upset, but they are safe," he said.
JIM MAHONEY / DMN A photo of 6-year-old Jackson Carr is pinned to a tree as part of a memorial in the front yard of the Carr home in Lewisville. |
Ms. Winfield and Mr. Hagood said they served as temporary counsel at the hearing. The parents requested court-appointed attorneys for their children Wednesday morning, the attorneys said.
Lewisville police continued their investigation of Jackson's death Wednesday. Police Sgt. Richard Douglass said that investigators will not discuss a motive for the slaying and that he is unsure when the investigation will be turned over to the district attorney.
Officials with the Denton County district attorney's office said they will rely on the police investigation to determine whether to ask that the 15-year-old girl, a seventh-grader, be certified to stand trial as an adult.
If certified, the girl could face a maximum sentence of life. The 10-year-old could face up to 40 years in detention.
The two oldest Carr children had a troubled past, according to records and former neighbors who know the family. The two admitted starting a fire at a Garland elementary school in 1998.
The 15-year-old girl was described by neighbors as a troublemaker who sometimes made racial slurs and had difficulty heeding instructions. The 10-year-old boy, they said, had trouble learning and suffered from Tourette's syndrome.
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On his way in to the juvenile detention center Wednesday, Mr. Carr said to the media, "Why don't you just leave us out of it?"
The couple turned to their church for support. Early Tuesday, they called pastors at the 10,000-member Covenant Church in Carrollton, where they had attended sporadically for two years, church officials said.
"I ended up praying with them and talking to them," said Daniel Erickson, a pastor at Covenant.
"We told them to rest on the faith they have, and we tried to minister to them the best we could," said Brian Coleman, executive assistant to the senior pastors at Covenant.
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Current and former neighbors said Mr. Carr was a computer engineer. Mr. Carr, 46, was seen driving a Honda with the vanity plate "PCMAN," and state vehicle records confirmed he was the car's registered owner. Mrs. Carr, 42, works as an administrative assistant at a Dallas law firm, Mr. Hagood said.
Denton County business records list Mr. Carr as the registered agent of American Resource Co. The company's address is the Carr home on Barfknecht Lane in Lewisville.
An Internet Web site describes American Resource as a company that provides materials and services to start home-based businesses. It sells packages of books, manuals, tapes and lists of "personal mentors."
The company says its "business system" can double a customer's annual income. It says it works through an unnamed company, which had $3 billion in sales over the last two years.
"After having worked for corporate America, we realized that we have nothing to show for our efforts and lifetime of devotion to someone else's business," said a statement on the site.
"With that burning in our minds, we finally made the choice to stop working to make someone else rich and to work towards making us wealthy by working for ourselves."
The Web site, which contains a photograph of Mr. Carr that he said was taken while he was judging a chili cook-off in Luckenbach, Texas, states that the family moved at the end of last year into a "beautiful ranch home in the country" that features a swimming pool and cable modem service.
"We would like to also thank our three wonderful children for their support in our option to become self-employed, and the support they give in assisting us with our business," a statement on the Web site said.
The family previously lived in a mobile home in Lewisville, which Mr. Carr depicted in a July 1999 Internet posting as an office suite.
The site states that the Carrs have operated under several business names. "We chose finally the American Resource company name because we are proud to live in America," the site stated.
Mr. Carr is also listed in Internet records as owner of the name brazilian-suntan.com. The Web site could not be accessed.
At the family's home Wednesday, friends fashioned a small memorial at the base of a tree in the front yard of the house on Barfknecht Lane.
Jackson, who would have turned 7 in August, was known to his father as "Baba-Louie," according to an obituary by the family.
An 8-by-10-inch photo of the boy tacked to the tree reads, "We love you Jackson."
Bunches of fresh flowers and teddy bears were propped at the base of the tree. One note read, "God wanted another angel. That angel is you today."
In the obituary, Jackson was described as "wonderful," "very outgoing" and "fun."
"He always brought a smile to those around him," the obituary read. "He loved fast cars and motorcycles, and especially enjoyed his collection of Hot Wheels."
Services are scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Ted Dickey Funeral Home Chapel in Plano with Mr. Erickson officiating. Interment will follow at Plano Mutual Cemetery.
Memorials may be made to the Buckner Children's Home, the Scottish Rite Hospital or the Children's Hospital.
Staff writers Jennifer Emily and Steve McGonigle contributed to this report.
E-mail rhorton@dallasnews.com
Kids' troubled past includes arson case
http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/stories/041702dnmetlewis-family.a037.html
A Look At The Crime Scene
http://www.dallasnews.com/popups/04-02/17041702lewisville.html
Isn't she a little old to be in seventh grade?
Did this article say the 10 year old could get up to 40 years or is it just early in the morning and I ain't fully awake?Hey! Long time no see! :O)
Officials with the Denton County district attorney's office said they will rely on the police investigation to determine whether to ask that the 15-year-old girl, a seventh-grader, be certified to stand trial as an adult.I don't exactly know how "detention" works for a 10 year old though. I mean if it's Juvenile detention, I doubt they'd keep him in until age 50.....unless his name is Jethro Bodine, maybe?If certified, the girl could face a maximum sentence of life. The 10-year-old could face up to 40 years in detention.
Isn't she a little old to be in seventh grade?Yeah, but this would probably explain why she was held back.....
The 15-year-old girl was described by neighbors as a troublemaker who
sometimes made racial slurs and had difficulty heeding instructions.
Tourette's Syndrome
Is that modern psychiatry's way of saying "demon-possessed"?
There is a bunch of sick puppies in this old world today.
That would not surprise me either........
"I do not know", he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
God said, "what have you done with him? His blood cries out to me from the ground."
In the meantime three previous allegations of physical and emotional abuse were investigated by CPS over the last four years. They found "no substantiating evidence" which is great for the Constitution, but the fact remains this family was under a cloud.
So maybe the cloud has burst.
I look forward with interest to the investigation of this incident, to see if further light and knowledge is forthcoming that will clarify that these parents were not only irresponsible but criminally culpable of abuse of their children.
The girl must pay the price for what she's done, but it's time for an accounting of the way these parents have treated their children.
In the absence of "credible evidence" I cannot draw any conclusions. But I would not be a bit surprised if it turns out that these kids lived in hell.
In it's most common manifestation the individual will display nervous tics such as repeated vocalizations, sniffing, hand motions, eye twitching, etc.
If left untreated and especially when in company with other more serious mental disorders it can lead to repeated vocal expressions of profanity including racial slurs. These are the people you see downtown yelling at traffic.
My daughter takes a very low dose of the drug Haldol. That helps keep her symptoms under control.
You have got to be f-n kidding me? Is this a typo?
Tourettes is not a "psychiatric" condition - it's an inherited (dominant mode) disorder - an abnormality in the gene(s) affecting the brain's metabolism of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
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