Mother's manslaughter hearing delayed

A judge on Thursday postponed until September the pretrial hearing of a Greenwood woman charged with manslaughter in the death last summer of her 10-month-old son in the Ouachita Mountains.

Authorities believe methamphetamine-induced hallucinations led Brooke Sueann Floyd, 22, to abandon her son, Harper Alexander Floyd, and her husband, Brian Floyd, 33. She is not charged in her husband's death.

Floyd is tentatively scheduled for pretrial hearings Sept. 21 and Sept. 22, after an Aug. 8 hearing in Yell County Circuit Court in Danville. She is out on bond.

Additional time was requested for preparation, pending Floyd's mental competency, according to a court document. Floyd's mental-evaluation report, conducted in April, concluded that she did not show symptoms of mental disease or defect at the time of the incident.

Her attorney, Bill James, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in January that he expected to stand by Floyd's plea of innocent by reason of mental disease or defect.

Autopsy results released after Harper's body was found July 29 indicated his cause of death was "exposure and abandonment."

Toxicology tests were run on Brian Floyd's body, but Charles Kokes, Arkansas' chief medical examiner, said the toxicology report cannot be released because homicide has not been ruled out as a cause of death.

Yell County Coroner Donna Wells said Thursday that she still has not received autopsy results from the state medical examiner's office.

James said he doesn't expect Brooke Floyd to be charged in the death of her husband.

U.S. Forest Service personnel found Brooke Floyd scratched, bruised and barefoot in a ditch in the Ouachita National Forest on July 25, 2014, according to an affidavit signed Aug. 4 by Yell County Sheriff's Capt. John Foster.

A ground and air search by the Arkansas State Police, the FBI and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission for Floyd's husband and son followed.

When authorities located Floyd, she told officers that she had left her son with her husband so she could seek help because people were chasing her family, according to the affidavit. Later, she said she and her husband had been hallucinating and fighting, the affidavit added.

NW News on 07/04/2015

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