GUILTY VA - Noah Thomas, 5, Pulaski County, 22 March 2015 #7

When I see his name on the thread, my heart drops. I truly hope it was an accident. Did they determine he drowned? How does dad know the lid flipped? Has that one ever flipped before? I think he should leave well enough alone. He just might find out more than he's expecting.

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It doesn't look like the lid could have closed behind Noah by accident after he fell in. Someone put the lid back on afterwards, imo. I guess the problem is it could have been anyone - a LE officer, or searcher, or neighbour. Even if foul play was suspected, it's possible a neighbour or passer-by pushed Noah in there then closed the lid whilst his mom was taking her nap... I wonder if mom or dad's fingerprints were found on the lid. Maybe more evidence can be released to the public now the trials are over.
I had read a long time ago about a girl falling into a similar looking septic tank, where the lid was stepped on in just the right way, came off, she fell in, and the lid flipped and fell right back in place. If it had not been seen, they would not have known what happened to the girl. That story haunts me to this day. With the mom being asleep when this happened, nobody was there to see. Everyone assumes that the lids are fastened appropriately. Whatever happened to the monstrously heavy concrete lids they used to have, I'll never know, and I'll never know why they stopped using them.. seems ridiculous. Here is the story:
http://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county-...ank_in_tewksbury_family_warns_of_dangers.html
 
I had read a long time ago about a girl falling into a similar looking septic tank, where the lid was stepped on in just the right way, came off, she fell in, and the lid flipped and fell right back in place. If it had not been seen, they would not have known what happened to the girl. That story haunts me to this day. With the mom being asleep when this happened, nobody was there to see. Everyone assumes that the lids are fastened appropriately. Whatever happened to the monstrously heavy concrete lids they used to have, I'll never know, and I'll never know why they stopped using them.. seems ridiculous. Here is the story:
http://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county-...ank_in_tewksbury_family_warns_of_dangers.html

OMG! What a horrible death trap those things can be.


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When Casey was found not guilty, I knew that it meant open season on kids if you felt like it. This outcome is making me so angry yet I intellectually knew it was coming.
 
Overturned. Poor Noah [emoji174] [emoji24]

White only appealed the more serious Class 4 felony charge.

On July 12, 2016, White was sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all but 23 months of that sentence suspended. White was also given credit for time served.

On Tuesday, although Petty admitted in his opinion that this is a hard case, he concluded that, "It would not benefit the general good of the community to expand Code § 18.2-371.1’s requirement of “willful” conduct to include a parent’s failure to protect a child from an undiscovered and unknown danger."

Petty elaborated, "Simply put, we conclude that the General Assembly, by requiring proof of *advertiser censored*willful*act or omission, intended a much higher*mens*rea*than the evidence establishes in this case."





https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/...es-conviction-regarding-son-noah-thomas-death

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Noah Thomas case: Appeals court reverses conviction against mother

http://www.roanoke.com/news/crime/p...cle_8a228695-3799-5046-946a-f69c5f427ba9.html

From link:

The Virginia Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of Ashley Jennifer White, ruling the Pulaski County mother should not be held criminally responsible for the 2015 septic tank drowning of Noah Thomas, her 5-year-old son...


White was charged with two counts of child abuse and neglect for the time she took Paul Thomas to work. She was also charged with one count of child abuse and neglect leading to injury, a more serious offense, for the time she was asleep and Noah died...

On appeal, Kelsey Bulger, White’s attorney, argued only against the conviction for the more serious child abuse and neglect leading to injury charge. She did not appeal the two other convictions for the time White left her children home alone to drive Paul Thomas to work. Bulger said there was just not enough evidence that Noah’s death, while terrible, resulted from abuse or neglect...

Judge William Petty wrote in the majority opinion that affirming the conviction would mean requiring parents to search out potential dangers and continuously supervise their children.

If they didn’t, “a parent could be subject to a felony conviction if he or she failed to recognize the danger posed by the unsecured tank cover, the unlatched gate, the rotted board, the unfenced pond, or any other hazard that, in hindsight, could have been corrected,” Petty wrote in the opinion published Tuesday. “Here, the evidence was insufficient to show that White left her son unsupervised with ‘the knowledge and consciousness that injury would result.’ ”

The decision wasn’t unanimous, as Judge Rossie Alston wrote a dissenting opinion arguing White was aware of the danger and was criminally culpable.
 
Commonwealth stops pursuit of Ashley White

The Virginia Attorney General’s Office will no longer try to re-convict Ashley White on a child abuse charge stemming from the 2015 death of her 5-year-old son, Noah Thomas, in a septic tank.

The deadline to seek further review from the Virginia Supreme Court has passed and “the Commonwealth will not be initiating any further action,” wrote Michael Kelly, a spokesman for the Virginia Attorney General’s office, in an email Wednesday...

Judge Brad Finch found White guilty on a charge of child abuse leading to an injury and on two child abuse and neglect charges. She appealed the abuse leading to an injury conviction but did not contest the other verdicts.

Finch sentenced White to serve a year and 11 months behind bars, a sentence that she completed before the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed her most serious conviction.

Last month, the commonwealth’s highest court declined to review the appeals court decision to overturn the conviction.
 
That's exactly what I feel like happened! They profited from and were rewarded for something that was their own fault (especially the "mom"--I use this term loosely). I could write a book about how furious I was when I heard this on the news earlier in the week. Drug-addicted, pot-growing, neglectful parents living in squalor, repeatedly not only leaving a 5 yo alone, but responsible for a tiny infant!! It sounds like the landlords, who were punished in this case, were some of the handful of people who acted responsibly toward Noah. Only thing I can say is, karma--I would be scared to death to spend a penny of this "blood money" if I were Paul or Ashley.
 
To me, it seems there are two issues. One is that those lids are just completely unsafe and are accidents waiting to happen. From this article below about a similar type of lid, it seems this could have happened regardless of whether the boy had been left unattended. The mom could have been home and allowed the boy to just play in the yard that morning, this same thing could have happened, and he still would have been seen to have 'disappeared', searched for, and ultimately found 'drowned' in the septic tank. Or she could have even been sitting outside with the kids on the other side of the home while he went running around the other side and same thing.

But during their investigation of this, police became aware of other things of concern. The parents obviously made some bad decisions, they were charged.. and I believe the father did some time. But those things still don't alleviate the liability regarding the lid itself, imho. To me, it is more of the manufacturer's issue, as opposed to the property owners. Kids should reasonably be able to play in their own yards without risk of such a thing happening, imho.

Unbelievable how much of the settlement the lawyers end up with.

I had read a long time ago about a girl falling into a similar looking septic tank, where the lid was stepped on in just the right way, came off, she fell in, and the lid flipped and fell right back in place. If it had not been seen, they would not have known what happened to the girl. That story haunts me to this day. With the mom being asleep when this happened, nobody was there to see. Everyone assumes that the lids are fastened appropriately. Whatever happened to the monstrously heavy concrete lids they used to have, I'll never know, and I'll never know why they stopped using them.. seems ridiculous. Here is the story:
Child falls into septic tank in Tewksbury; family warns of dangers - nj.com
 
Still a tragedy for the forgotten victim in this case. Noah was let down by parents.

The property owners clearly did not have their lid secured.

I feel fairly certain that Noah and his sister would have suffered other neglect with possible other tragedies befalling them.
 
Thinking of you today dear Noah.

Fly high upon the clouds and play with all the other children forever.
 

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