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From Local News
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Anniston mother of infant in heat-related death: 'I will always be haunted'
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
ANNISTON, Alabama -- WBRC-TV is reporting that the mother charged in connection with her four-month-old son's death inside a hot car last month says she will never forgive herself.
"I will always be haunted," Katherine Papke said, in an interview with the television station. "I know he was crying for me."
Bennett Owen Smith was found unresponsive in a vehicle in the 400 block of Goode Road on the old Fort McClellan property Aug. 9. Smith's mother, Katherine Papke, 35, of Anniston, was arrested and charged with manslaughter.
Authorities said the child died of heat exposure.
Papke's attorney Jim Sturdivant said in an interview last month that Papke, a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army, went to work that day at the McClellan Readiness Center.
Shortly before she arrived at work, Sturdivant said, she dropped off her two daughters at Sacred Heart Catholic School. After she parked her 2013 Toyota minivan to go inside, she worked straight through lunch thinking she had dropped Bennett, nicknamed "Bo," off at daycare. She returned to the car at 2 p.m.
It was only when she came to the vehicle to leave that she realized she hadn't dropped the child off, as the car seat was in the back, she said.
The death is the third in Alabama this summer involving a child in a hot car. In July, 11-month-old Gabriella Gi-Ny Luong of Homewood was discovered by her mother Katie Luong still strapped in her car seat in a locked Lexus parked outside the family's Genesis Nail Spa. The mother in that case has not been charged in the child's death. This month, three-year-old Jaylen Hammett of Altoona was discovered inside an unlocked car Sept. 1 unresponsive. He was later taken to Children's Hospital, where he died later that week. Hammett and his mother were inside their house taking a nap that day. When the mother awoke, she went outside and discovered the boy, unresponsive, inside an unlocked vehicle. No charges were filed in this case.
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Keywords: ANNISTON, Alabama ,Bennett Owen Smith ,Goode Road ,old Fort McClellan property ,Katherine Papke,manslaughter, heat exposure,McClellan Readiness Center
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