Key witness in Ross Harris trial reacts to decision not to retry case

Courtney Francisco
·3 min read

A woman who spoke to the Cobb County District Attorney before he made the decision not to retry Ross Harris in the death of his son is reacting to the announcement.

Harris was convicted of murder and child cruelty in 2016, two years after he left his son, Cooper in a hot car. The Georgia Supreme Court reversed that ruling last year. After 11 months of research, the DA announced it would not retry the case.

Janette Fennell is President of Kids and Car Safety.

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She said the non profit tracks data on children who die in hot cars. She said the government was not counting data when she began in the 90s. Since then, she has counted 44 children who have died in hot cars in Georgia. She said Harris’ son, Cooper, was one of two children in the state who died in hot cars in 2014.

She said her conversation with the current district attorney was earlier this year. She said the purpose of the conversation was to share data about how a father could forget about his 22-month-old son in the back on his SUV for nearly seven hours.

“It really has to do with the way our brains work, or in this case, how they let us down,” said Fennell.

Fennell told Channel Two Action News, “In 90 percent of the cases we have identified, they were unintentional and usually due to a change in routine which also took place in this incident.”

During the 2016 trial, Harris argued he forgot to drop the baby off at daycare. Instead, he drove his SUV to his job at the Home Depot corporate office on Cumberland Boulevard.

In 2014, two-year-old Cooper was locked inside the car at about 9:30 in the morning.

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Harris left for lunch with co-workers and returned to his SUV to put light bulbs in the back seat that he purchased during the lunch hour.

That’s a pivotal issue prosecutors tried to use as evidence in this case. Fennell argued, “Harris never even looked inside the vehicle nor did his face/head even clear the roof of his vehicle.”

At about 4:15 p.m., Harris dove two miles by his account before noticing his son in the back seat. Finally, he pulled off in a shopping center parking lot and removed Cooper’s body.

However, prosecutors argued this case was no accident. They said he was texting underage girls while his son was dying.

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the conviction due to that connection. Although, they allowed the sex crimes against children charges to remain in place.

“This man murdered his child, and you can prove this case as I sit here now as I speak to you,” Jesse Evans, a lawyer who prosecuted the case in 2016, said.

Evans was stunned to hear the district attorney decided not to retry the case.

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Harris’ ex-wife’s attorney said she supports the DA’s decision.

“She always believed he never intentionally tried to hurt her child,” said Lawrence Zimmerman.

The decision caused Fennell to reflect on what she told the district attorney investigators.

“Everybody wants to push back against this and say there’s no way I would ever do this, and we want to believe that,” said Fennell. “Our brains can let us down, and, unfortunately, in these cases, our brains let us down in absolutely the worst moment.”

So far in 2023, four children have died in hot cars in the U.S., none of which have been in Georgia. In all of 2022, 36 children died in hot cars. Four of them were in Georgia.

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