By the time Leanna Taylor got to her then-husband’s office on the afternoon of June 18, 2014, she had a head full of steam. But after coming to the realization her 22-month-old son Cooper was dead, her emotions faded away, a Home Depot corporate security officer testified Friday.
“She went from hot to not, to me,” Wesley Houston said.
Houston, the prosecution’s first witness Friday, said he was sitting at his security desk when Taylor and another Home Depot official arrived at the door. A short while earlier, at 4:14 p.m., Cooper’s father, Ross Harris, left the office to meet friends for an afternoon movie.
Harris, who is charged with Cooper's murder, has insisted he left Cooper in his hot car that day by accident. The plan had been for him to go see "22 Jump Street" and for Taylor to pick up their child, defense attorneys had said. Prosecutors contend Harris intentionally left Cooper in the family Hyundai Tucson to die.
Taylor arrived at the Home Depot office after leaving Little Apron Academy, where Cooper went to daycare. On Thursday, a daycare teacher testified that Taylor became “frantic” and “confused” when she was told Cooper was not at Little Apron.
While Taylor sat on a bench by the front door of Harris’ office building, a large-screen TV on a nearby wall aired local news coverage of the death of a child who had been left in a hot car.
Houston said it didn’t take him long to realize what was going on. “I put one and one together,” he said, adding he became quite emotional.
In pretrial hearings, Cobb police have testified Taylor, upon learning her child was dead, showed little emotion upon learning her child was dead. Taylor was initially viewed as a suspect in the case, but she was never charged and is expected to be a key witness for her ex-husband.
When Taylor first arrived at the Home Depot office that afternoon, “she had a whole lot of steam,” Houston testified. She began asking, “Where’s Ross? Where’s my kid? As any parent would.”
But the longer she sat there, her composition changed dramatically, he said.
“She was just sitting there like nothing happened,” Wesley Houston said. “She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She didn’t show any emotions.”
Houston also testified he’d seen Harris enter and leave the office on numerous occasions. They’d typically exchange pleasantries, but nothing else.
On the day of Cooper’s death, Harris walked by the security desk and told Houston he was going to a movie with friends, Houston testified, adding that seemed unusual.
“He’d never done that before,” the security officer told the jury. “It was like a public service announcement.”
About the Author
