2nd Update (March 11, 2016): Judge Naramore pleads innocent in child death
Update (February 11, 2016): Arrest warrant issued for Judge Wade Naramore in connection with son’s death
Original story continues below…
Police in Arkansas are weathering major criticism after the hot car death of an Arkansas judge’s son last week has thus far failed to result in criminal charges.
Scant details were released Friday immediately following the incident, in which the body of an unidentified infant was found at 3:12pm in a car outside of a home in Hot Springs.
Police only revealed first responders were unable to resuscitate the child, who was believed to have died due to extreme heat, and that they would be transporting the body to the state’s crime lab for further investigation.
On Saturday afternoon, Hot Springs police identified the boy as Thomas Naramore, the 18-month-old son of Garland County circuit judge Wade Naramore. No suspects were named and no arrests were made that day.
Police revealed Monday the person who made the initial 911 call was Wade himself, and that family members had volunteered to be interviewed by police, but refused to provide media a copy of the incident report.
Arkansas Times reports “the child may have been left in the car unattended for as long as four hours.”
“Several 911 calls were made after the child was found. The car was driven to a neighbor’s home, where one of the 911 calls was made as an attempt was made to revive the child,” the Times reported. “Reports have indicated the child was with his father, but absent a police report, that has not been confirmed.”
As The Free Thought Project points out, Hot Springs police just last year arrested a mother for leaving her child unattended in a vehicle minutes from where the Naramore incident took place. In that case, the child did not die.
The case has been assigned to a special prosecutor after the local prosecutor formerly appointed asked to recuse himself.
Hot Springs Police Chief David Flory told KATV today that “The decision to withhold information and to postpone any possible arrest in this matter is made at the specific direction of Mr. Scott Ellington, the special prosecutor recently assigned the case.”
The chief went on to assure the public the department would “vigorously investigate” the reported crime and that they would “search for the truth… regardless of who might be a suspect in a given case.”
KATV news noted the temperature inside a car parked in the sun all day could reach upwards of 136 degrees.
“Studies from the California State University in San Jose show that when a person’s body temperature reaches 107 degrees, a person’s organs start shutting down,“ reports THV11. “A child’s body heats up three to five times faster than adults.”
Naramore’s is reportedly the first hot car death in Arkansas this year, according to noheatstroke.org, and the eleventh in the nation.
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