Witness: Harris’ wails over lost child didn’t seem ‘sincere’

A woman testified Wednesday that Ross Harris' wails of grief over the loss of his 22-month-old son Cooper did not appear "sincere."

Under cross-examination, however, Harris’ defense attorney presented a number of contradictions between Atiyka Eastland’s testimony on the witness stand and what she told police investigators two years ago.

Eastland, who was meeting a man at the nearby restaurant Cinco, said she heard Harris’ SUV come to a screeching halt the afternoon of June 18, 2004. When she walked up to the scene, she saw Cooper’s lifeless body on the pavement next to Harris’ Hyundai Tucson parked in the Akers Mill shopping center parking lot.

“I saw the child, the baby, on the ground, where he had placed him,” Eastland said. “I saw the dad put his hands on his hair and say, ‘What have I done?’ … He kept saying, what had he done.”

She said Harris then walked away from the scene.

Eastland said she saw Harris get handcuffed and put in the back of a police cruiser, where he kept turning around and looking back to the scene. At times, he would wail in grief, she said.

“For me, it was just … being very calm” that seemed unusual,” Eastland told prosecutor Chuck Boring.

Asked for her impression of what she said, Eastland said she thought it “wasn’t sincere.”

Later, she added, “I thought it was strange that (Harris’) tears went on and off.”

But under cross-examination by defense attorney Maddox Kilgore, Eastland said she forgot telling several things to police in interviews more than two years ago shortly after Cooper’s death.

She said she didn’t recall telling investigators that she saw Harris try to give CPR to Cooper, that he yelled for someone to come help his son and that nothing about him seemed suspicious that day.

Do you think your memory would have been better back in July 2014 or would it be better now? Kilgore asked.