Leanna Taylor testified Monday she didn't recognize herself when watching surveillance footage of her reunion with then-husband Ross Harris after he had been charged in their 22-month-old son Cooper's death.
» Hot car death trial live stream: Watch Leanna Taylor take the stand.
“I did not know you could react in the way I reacted,” said Taylor, who divorced Harris earlier this year. “It was like someone else took my body from me. Someone took over and got me through each step of the way.”
Her lack of outward emotion led Cobb County police to suspect she might have colluded with her husband to kill their only child.
On June 30, 2014, 12 days after Cooper was left strapped in a car seat for seven hours, police produced a warrant to search the Harris' home.
“They were very stern in their reaction,” she said of police. “It was scary.”
The search warrant said Taylor had said she researched hot car deaths. She denied that on Monday, saying she had only researched rear-facing car seats.
Taylor was never charged. But in testimony at Harris’ probable cause hearing a few days later, Cobb police Det. Phil Stoddard spoke of Taylor as if she was a suspect, referring to her asking her then-husband, “Did you say too much?”
“I know how Ross responds to people. Especially to people he didn’t know,” Taylor said Monday in her first public comments since her son’s funeral. “He talks a lot even if he has nothing to say.”
“I didn’t understand what was happening,” she continued. “I didn’t know why he was being charged. The only thing I could think in my head is, ‘What did you say?’ So those words came out.”
She said she felt she “needed to be strong for (Harris).”
“It was very difficult to see him like that,” Taylor said. “To see him that broken and beside himself … having to watch it on the video, I can’t even deal with that. It’s just raw.”
Prosecutor Chuck Boring objected when Taylor said, “I knew it was something that wasn’t done purposely.” Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark sustained the objection.
Taylor described that night as an “out of body experience.” She was driven home by one of Cooper’s teachers from his daycare but testified she didn’t want to go inside.
“If I went through the door it would be real. And I didn’t want it to be real,” Taylor said. “So I just sat down on the sidewalk outside.”
Finally, she went into their Marietta apartment. The emotions that had eluded her came flowing out when she got to Cooper’s room.
“I just got in his bed and I just cried,” Taylor said. “I was finally able to cry.”
Taylor’s testimony will resume around 1 p.m. following a break for lunch. Return for updates.
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