Jury sees photos of child left in hot car
Eight tell of day judge’s son died
HOT SPRINGS — As photographs of the body of 17-month-old Thomas Naramore were passed around the jury box Tuesday, one juror looked up at the ceiling, refusing to look at the images as he passed them to the next person in line.
Defense attorneys for Garland County Circuit Judge Wade Naramore — who is on trial this week on a charge of negligent homicide in the 2015 death of his son, who had been left in a hot car — objected to inclusion of the photographs, but special Circuit Judge John Langston ruled them admissible.
“This is a case about a child that lost [his] life,” deputy prosecutor Thomas Young said. “Seeing the pictures is very important. It makes it real. There is a reason why the defense didn’t want the jury to see them.”
Defense attorney Erin Cassinelli said the prosecution’s use of the photographs was not necessary and called the viewing a “pure dig at emotions.”
In an opening statement, Cassinelli warned jurors that the trial was going to be emotionally difficult.
“The Naramores need to put this trial behind them so they can begin to heal,” she said.
Thomas was the couple’s only child.
Ashley Naramore, the child’s mother, left the room for parts of the testimony as police detectives,
a paramedic and a coroner described the condition of Thomas’ body the day of his death.
At her front-row seat behind her husband’s defense table, Ashley Naramore was cradled on either side by various family members at different times.
She wailed and bent over clutching her stomach when footage from the dashboard camera of Sgt. Shane Kaiser of the Hot Springs Police Department was played for the jury.
Kaiser was first on the scene at 120 Fair Oaks Place in Hot Springs on July 24, 2015, the day of Thomas’ death. Wade Naramore can be heard screaming in the background, “I killed my baby! I killed my baby!”
Thomas Naramore’s core body temperature was above 107 degrees when Coroner Stuart Smedley examined the toddler that afternoon. Thomas had been in the car about five hours.
Ashley Naramore can be heard on the audio trying to calm her husband and saying: “It’s OK. It’s OK. This could happen to anybody.”
Wade Naramore, 36, is heard screaming through the majority of the video. “Oh, my God! My baby!” “How did this happen? How did this happen?”
“I don’t know what happened.”
Kaiser testified that Naramore was wailing and pacing back and forth. Naramore was outside at one point “hunkered down on his knees” and crying when Kaiser mistakenly referred to Naramore as “Judge Abernathy.”
“He quit crying and said, ‘It’s Naramore.’ As if, ‘How dare you don’t know who I am,’” Kaiser said, adding that Naramore then began crying again.
On cross-examination by defense attorney Patrick Benca, Kaiser said shock victims often have erratic emotions after a traumatic event, “crying one minute” and silent the next.
“He wasn’t OK, was he?” Benca asked.
“No, sir,” Kaiser said quietly.
Naramore’s neighbor Gerald Keith testified that his dog went to the storm door and became agitated. Keith said he went outside and found Wade Naramore sitting on the lawn, cradling Thomas and crying out “I killed my child! I killed my child!”
Keith said he reached down and picked up Thomas, and they took him inside the residence.
“His clothes were really hot,” Keith said. “I assumed right then it was the heat.”
Keith said he undressed Thomas on the couch and that he stood in a cold shower with the child until authorities arrived. Wade Naramore, Keith said, was in the front room.
Deputy prosecutor Gina Knight asked Keith if he was the one primarily trying to help Thomas. He said yes.
Under cross-examination by Cassinelli, Keith said it was an unfair statement. Cassinelli referred to a statement Keith gave to authorities saying that Wade Naramore retrieved cold towels to place on Thomas’ body.
“We didn’t place cold towels on the child,” Keith replied.
“But there was a wet towel found at the scene,” Cassinelli said.
Under redirect, Keith told Knight that Wade Naramore “came into the shower and stood there.”
Naramore’s wallet, cellphone and wristwatch were later found on the bathroom cabinet.
Keith “had the child from the time I picked him up from his arms until the EMT arrived,” he said.
Kaiser testified, however, that it was Wade Naramore
who was carrying the child down the hall from the bathroom.
The defense took issue with the fact that no evidence was taken from the car when investigators searched its interior. Thomas’ shoes as well as a toy shovel were left in the car seat, but investigators only took a photograph of the items.
Under cross-examination by Benca, Hot Springs detective Les Jessup said the trunk of the car had not even been opened and was never searched.
“Would it surprise you to know that there was a swim bag there?” Benca asked, adding that Wade Naramore also had placed Thomas’ snack of cut-up fruit in the trunk with the bag. It wasn’t until Wade Naramore was on his way to swimming lessons that afternoon — after collecting Thomas’ swimming bag and snack from his home — that he realized that he had left Thomas strapped in his car seat for more than five hours, Benca said.
The first day of the trial ended about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, after eight witnesses testified about the events on the day that Thomas died and about how the crime scene was investigated.
Young said in an interview afterward that the prosecution will call about three witnesses today before handing the trial over to the defense.
The trial will continue at 9 a.m. today at the Garland County Courthouse.