| Subject: Tragedy began with good intent |
Author:
Chris
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 12/17/06 3:22pm
Tragedy began with good intent
Mother gave up daughter to beat her drug addiction, earned sobriety certificate a week before girl's death.
Iveory Perkins / The Detroit News
CANTON TOWNSHIP -- Anne Hirsch couldn't care for both her daughter and a crack addiction. Carol A. Poole wanted nothing more than to spoil a child, but couldn't conceive.
One struggled with deafness, drugs and homelessness. The other is a former foster child who beat the odds to live comfortably in a $300,000 Canton Township home.
They came together in January when Poole took custody of Hirsch's daughter, Allison Newman, as a foster child. They met for the second time Monday in Plymouth District Court when 40-year-old Poole was ordered to stand trial for felony murder, involuntary manslaughter and first-degree child abuse in Allison's Sept. 22 death.
Prosecutors allege Poole dropped the 2-year-old child over a railing during a spinning game, one of four versions of the injuries she told police.
"She was the most wonderful little baby," said Hirsch, 26, of Dearborn Heights, who is deaf and uses sign language. She had tears in her eyes.
Communicating publicly for the first time since the case again thrust Michigan's troubled child care system into the spotlight, Hirsch and Poole's husband, Alan, described the death as a tragedy that started with good intentions.
With assistance from Lutheran Social Services, Hirsch gave up Allison when she was 6 months old to a neighbor of the Pooles. Hirsch thought the arrangement was temporary until she beat crack. The Pooles fell in love with the bright-eyed youngster and were working on adopting her when she died.
But it all went wrong.
In a wrongful death lawsuit filed in Wayne County against the Pooles, Lutheran Social Services and others, Hirsch alleges Carol Poole regularly beat Allison. The suit, brought by Geoffery Fieger's law firm, also alleges a daycare center, Childtime Child Care in Plymouth, ignored signs of abuse. The state has shut the center.
Police claim they saw at least seven small bruises on Allison's forehead and lower lip after Poole called 911 the day of her death to report her being blue and unresponsive. Doctors found she had a blunt-force head injury.
Suspicions intensified when Poole's demeanor changed as Allison's condition worsened at Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, according to police reports.
"Throughout the day, Poole was stating to social workers and people she was on the phone with that she did not want to live and she wanted to die," according to a Sept. 22 report written by Canton Township Officer Derek Torolski.
"At one point Poole walked up to me, sat next to me and Poole then began asking me to shoot her multiple times. Pleading with me to 'Just shoot her,' saying 'Why can't you just shoot me!' " fixated on my pistol."
Alan Poole, a senior program manager for Metaldyne, denies any abuses, but acknowledged his wife was at her wits' end. He was out of town. The girl they wanted to adopt was dying. And rushing to the hospital, Poole learned that her father had died after a long illness earlier that day.
"She was nervous. I feel bad that I wasn't there," he said. "All she could do was weep because our little girl is gone and we will never see her again."
Poole's attorney, Alan Satawa, has said prosecutors overcharged her because Allison is the third high-profile death of a current or former foster child in Michigan in recent months, following the January discovery of the body of Ricky Holland in Ingham County and the Aug. 14 beating death of 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge in a Detroit foster home.
Poole described his wife as a "great mom" who doted on Allison and another foster child, an infant boy state workers removed from the home after the incident. The two called the girl "Alley," and she took to calling his wife "Mommy," he said.
"I must admit I was a bit jealous," Alan Poole said. "I wanted her to say 'daddy' first."
Occasionally homeless and in and out of halfway houses, Hirsch said she kicked drugs in an effort to regain custody of Allison. Just a week before the death, Hirsch said she received a certificate of sobriety from a treatment center that would have helped her regain custody of the girl.
"I got much better because I thought she was coming back, and then I heard that she was gone," she said. "I really didn't know who the (Pooles) were, but they wanted to take my daughter forever, and I wasn't giving up Allison."
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 