Police released more documents Monday from the alleged playground attack that's caused a political firestorm in Alpharetta, and more discrepancies emerged.
The two officers who went to Wills Park on Oct. 15, when a Roswell mother accused Councilwoman Cheryl Oakes' husband, Paul, of slamming her daughter off a swing, wrote conflicting accounts of what Oakes said, according to supplemental reports obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News.
Oakes, through his attorney, has strongly denied that he hurled the 4-year-old girl off a swing, causing her to land on her back and head, as her mother, Christole Abdelmaseh, alleges. What's unclear from the reports is whether he ever admitted to touching her at all.
Abdelmaseh also has alleged that the two officers gave special treatment to Oakes, telling her that there was nothing they could do, and chatting and laughing with him rather than seeking witnesses. The city handed its internal affairs investigation into that complaint over to the Sandy Springs Police Department to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The GBI is handling the criminal side of the case.
The contradicting accounts would be advantageous to Oakes should charges be pursued, his private investigator, T.J. Ward, acknowledged Monday.
"You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth," Ward said, adding that otherwise, Oakes' team believes the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety has done an exemplary job handling the case. "Mr. Oakes only spoke to one police officer, and he told him that he did not touch the child."
Still, in a supplemental report written eight days after the incident, one officer, Matt Burger, wrote that when he arrived on the scene, Officer Chris Massey told him that Oakes said he "did pick the girl up out of the swing" and set her down, telling her to wait in line.
Massey's report, written nine days after the incident, said Oakes told him that when the girl tried to get in the swing ahead of his granddaughter, he pulled the swing away, and she fell to the ground screaming.
"He said that he only pulled the swing away from her and didn't touch her," Massey's report says. Oakes' attorney, Lee Whiteside, gave the same account in an interview with the AJC last week.
Neither report identifies Oakes by name. No formal incident report was generated until Oct. 16, when Abdelmaseh went to the police department and insisted she wanted to press charges.
Alpharetta police have directed questions to Assistant City Administrator James Drinkard.
Drinkard said no one with the department could address why the two accounts differ, since it will play into both the internal affairs and criminal investigations.
Abdelmaseh, whose daughter, Hadassah, was interviewed by the GBI on Monday, expressed frustration after being told of the conflicting reports.
"Are they now trying to change the story?" she asked.
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