BAY ST. LOUIS, MS — A former Long Beach, Mississippi, cop tearfully admitted in court Monday that she was having sex with her supervisor while her 3-year-old daughter was dying in her hot patrol car in 2016. Cassie Barker, 29, pleaded guilty to reduced charges of culpable negligence and manslaughter in a plea deal with the state, according to media reports.
Barker’s daughter, Cheyenne Heyer, was strapped in a car seat inside the patrol car for about four hours on Sept. 30, 2016. The air conditioning was running in the patrol car, but was not blowing cold air, and the toddler was unresponsive when Barker returned to the car, the reports said. Cheyenne’s body temperature was 107 degrees and she died of heat exposure, according to authorities.
The state has recommended that Barker, who was initially charged with second-degree murder, receive the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois delayed sentencing until April 1 in Bay St. Louis, saying he wants more time to consider the punishment.
“I don’t know what I could ever do to you that could be worse than what you’ve already experienced. … You will forever be entombed in a prison of your own mind,” he told Barker, according to an account by the Biloxi Sun Herald.
Barker was hospitalized after her daughter’s death, and court records indicate she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, but was found competent to stand trial, Fox News reported.
The minimum sentence Barker could receive is two years in prison and a $500 fine, news station WLOX reported.
Both Barker and her then-supervisor, Clark Ladner, were fired after the toddler’s death, the Sun Herald reported.They told investigators they had fallen asleep. Ladner wasn’t charged, authorities said, because he didn’t know the toddler had been left alone in the car.
Cheyenne’s father, Ryan Hyer, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Long Beach Police Department and Mississippi Child Protection Services. He told reporters the state agency should have done more to protect his daughter after Barker reportedly left her daughter alone in a car in May 2015 while she was shopping in Gulfport. Heyer said he was never notified of the incident.
He told the Sun Herald he is haunted by what his daughter went through before she died.
“Every time I close my eyes, I picture her suffering and then I picture her laying in this coffin,” Heyer told the newspaper of his daughter. “I still see her smiling and laughing in my head and I would assume that smile and laughter turned to pain and suffering in that instance. It’s an image I don’t want to have, but it’s one I can’t get rid of.”
An average of 38 children die each year of vehicular heatstroke after they are left in hot cars, according to the safety organization Kids and Cars. Last year, there were 51 deaths.