Adam Brady had come back from working a night shift at a Cracker Barrel restaurant when he discovered his 3-month-old son dead in their Spence Avenue home in Newnan.
It was 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and the 30-year-old noticed Cassius wasn’t breathing and tried to wake him up, according a Newnan police incident report.
But he was too late: a preliminary autopsy report indicated the baby died at 4:30 a.m. after he suffocated in his crib, Newnan police said. The child was found face down on a plush pillow. The crib was covered with blankets, police said.
Brady didn’t call police until 10 a.m. — nearly five hours after he’d gotten home.
He and girlfriend Elizabeth Norris were arrested Monday on second-degree murder charges. They remained in the Coweta County jail without bond.
“The mother and boyfriend were aware of the dangers that having a pillow in the crib and placing the baby on his stomach could cause, prior to the death,” Newnan police Deputy Chief Mark Cooper said early Tuesday.
Family of the couple said the use of the long pillow had been Brady’s idea.
“He claims that the baby sleeps better that way,” Elizabeth Norris’ sister Kayla Henderson told Channel 2 Action News.
Officers overheard Brady acknowledge knowing Cassius was dead because of his military training and repeatedly referencing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
“I heard him refer to it and that his cousin died from it years ago at least four times,” Newnan police Officer J.R. Robinson wrote in his report.
The arrests didn’t surprise family members, who said the couple deserved to be in jail. Elizabeth Norris’ family said her behavior made them suspicious of her. The 23-year-old also has a 3-year-old daughter.
“(Elizabeth) knew exactly what she was doing,” Henderson said. “She got what she deserved.”
Norris’ reaction to the news of her son’s death didn’t help either.
“She was screaming,” brother-in-law Darius Ervin told Channel 2, “but it was more forced. It was more rehearsed.”
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