"John" HARRISON-MOORE - Newborn -(2009) DeKalb County GA

DeKalb County authorities said
Friday they had not yet conducted an autopsy on a newborn baby boy who
died after his parents abandoned him in a storm sewer.

Landis Stewart-Moore, 19, was charged with first degree child cruelty
after his girlfriend's newborn baby was found in a storm drain.


Deputy Medical Examiner John Henson said the autopsy would be
conducted later Friday. A decision on whether to upgrade charges
against the teenage parents is awaiting results of the autopsy.

The parents appeared in a DeKalb County courtroom Thursday night. Clad in orange prison jumpsuits, they showed little emotion after learning their son had died.
Sinead A. Harrison, 18, and her boyfriend, 19-year-old Landis
Bernard Stewart-Moore, could face additional charges since the infant
died. They remain in jail on $50,000 cash-only bond on felony child
cruelty charges.
"We didn't know what to do with the kid," Stewart-Moore told
reporters as he left the courthouse in handcuffs. Harrison didn't speak.
Harrison apparently gave birth at her boyfriend's home on Grand
Pines Drive in south DeKalb near Wesley Chapel Road late Wednesday
night or early Thursday morning. After the birth, she went to a local
hospital. Stewart-Moore hid the baby, police said.
Harrison told staff at DeKalb Medical Center’s Hillandale facility
in Lithonia that she had just delivered a baby and the infant was in a
trash bin at a gas station on Wesley Chapel Road. A police search at
the gas station turned up nothing.
Gagnon said detectives don’t know why the mother told them that her baby was in a trash can since she did not leave him there.
Harrison gave police Stewart-Moore's address. When police
interviewed Stewart-Moore, he said his girlfriend had delivered at his
house and he admitted he had put the baby in a storm drain, Gagnon
said. Stewart-Moore was arrested and jailed. After Harrison was
released from the hospital, she was also jailed.
The baby boy was only a few hours old when DeKalb police officers,
frantically looking for him, found him inside a storm drain just a few
yards from his father's home. The infant was found around 4:30 a.m.
Thursday and was reported in good health initially. The baby was alive
and making noise, detectives told Judge Mary Whitehall in Magistrate
Court Thursday night.
The baby was transported to the hospital, where he later died.
According to Deanna Smith with the Georgia Department of Human
Resources, the couple could have avoided criminal charges by leaving
the child with an on-duty hospital worker. The state’s Safe Place for
Newborns Act of 2002 allows a mother to leave her newborn baby within
seven days of birth at any hospital in Georgia. The newborn must be
left with a hospital employee and the mother must leave her name and
address.
Scott Nelson, who lives next door to Stewart-Moore, said the storm
drain was just three houses away from where Stewart-Moore lives with
his mother. Nelson said he knew little about the family next door
except Stewart-Moore and his friends would hang out in the yard, and
play music loudly while the mother was at work.
“That’s when you hear the commotion over there,” Nelson said.
No one answered phone calls to the home Thursday evening.
Another neighbor, Carol Orr, said she saw Stewart-Moore walking
alone outside in the rain Wednesday evening. Now, she says she's
shocked and saddened to learn what happened to the newborn.
"It just hit me so hard," Orr said. "They knew what they were doing."
Orr said Harrison didn't appear to be hiding her pregnancy.
According to DeKalb jail records, Stewart-Moore has been in custody
there before. He was charged with armed robbery, aggravated assault and
kidnapping in connection with the April 2008 robbery of a Candler Road
hamburger stand. Last month, he was arrested for marijuana possession,
according to jail records.

The birth mother, 18-year-old Sinaed A. Harrison, and her boyfriend, Landis Bernard Stewart-Moore, 19, were charged with cruelty to children, a felony. Harrison bonded out of jail, but Stewart-Moore is still there, held on the cruelty charge and unrelated charges from 2008, including kidnapping, aggravated assault and armed robbery.
snipped
http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/covington-woman-embraces-abandoned-171988.html

27-JUN-11 09:30:00

Jury Trial Calendar

7A

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Landis Bernard Stewart-Moore


Docket Text Details

Case ID 10CR1573
Description Trial Calendar
Docket Filing Date 31-AUG-2011
Associated Party None
Text
DEKALB COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION-3 JURY TRIAL CALENDAR CALL ON 09/26/2011 AT 9:30 A.M. FOR BOND CASES AND 1:30 P.M. FOR JAIL CASES. THE HONORABLE JUDGE CLARENCE F. SEELIGER PRESIDES IN COURTROOM 7A.

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Landis Stewart-Moore and Sinead Harrison

Docket Text Details

Case ID 10CR5091
Description Copy Of Bench Warrant
Docket Filing Date 23-SEP-2011
Associated Party LANDIS BERNARD STEWART-MOORE
Text

AS TO STEWART-MOORE
DUPLICATE ORIGINAL FILED.


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