Child victim testifies in mother's trial for attempted murder
SARASOTA — The girl came into the small room at the Sarasota County Judicial Center Wednesday morning playful as ever, tightly hugging a giant stuffed penguin and taking a seat next to prosecutor Andrea McHugh.
The 7-year-old's testimony could put her mother in prison for the rest of her life. Prosecutors say Ashley Parker, 31, tried to kill her then-6-year-old daughter — twice.
Wednesday, the girl testified about the events the morning of June 26, 2015, after she and Parker were dropped off at their home on Leon Street.
The girl and her mother sat in the back seat of the car last summer, as the girl's grandparents in the front drove them to McDonald’s for breakfast. They ran errands before returning home.
A six-member jury and one alternate — six women and one man — heard how, during the trip, the girl's mother sat next to her pink booster seat, holding a knife.
The girl asked her grandparents, who she often spent time with at their home four houses away, if she could stay with them, but they said no. They would be back soon.
The girl didn’t tell them about the knife Parker held in her hand.
“I thought she was going to whoop me if I told,” the girl said in a closed-circuit television interview from a smaller room inside the Judicial Center. The Herald-Tribune is not using her name because of her age and the nature of the charges.
Parker listened to her daughter’s testimony, but the girl could not see her mom bound in shackles behind a table. A veil also concealed Parker’s shackled legs from jurors.
Inside the house
The girl said when her grandparents left that day in June, she felt alone and scared.
She went into a room and watched Mickey Mouse episodes; her mother was in another room still holding the knife, she said. She called for the girl to get cleaned up and go to sleep.
Parker took the girl to a bathroom and placed her — still wearing pajamas — into the bathtub.
She turned off the bathroom lights.
The girl said she couldn’t tell what it was, but Parker put some kind of pill in her mouth and then pushed her daughter’s head under water. The girl didn’t swallow the pill. She didn’t have time to taste it before she spit it out.
The girl said she kicked and screamed until her mother let her up and briefly turned on the lights.
Parker took the girl to a bedroom and lay her, still in soaked clothes, on a bed. She began to softly scratch the girl’s back to soothe her to sleep.
“Then she stabbed me,” the girl said.
In her back.
Her hip.
Twice in her stomach.
Her leg.
The girl reaffirmed her mother attacked her when her grandparents came into the house.
Defense attorney J. Jervis Wise only briefly questioned the child, asking her, “Did mommy ever do anything to hurt you before?”
The girl replied, “No.”
Three mental health experts will testify Thursday regarding Parker's mental state at the time of the incident.
Wise will also try to prove the defendant was delusional for months prior to the attack because of childhood abuse. He said she was committed under the Baker Act as a child, but has not received significant help since.
Prosecutors brought EMTs, police detectives and family members to the stand who said that while Parker clearly needed help, but she was not out of her mind.
Sarasota Police Detective Patrick Comac said he saw the defendant mumbling after she was arrested, but described her as calm.
“She wasn’t yelling… She wasn’t using strong language at the time or anything like that,” Comac. “She didn’t seem worked up or upset.
Parker made open statements that if she had a gun, she would shoot herself, and that officers "should have shot me."
“That’s my baby. I love her to death," Parker told, her mother Valerie Carey, inside the jail after the attack. "I would never do anything to hurt her. She is my everything.”
Parker stated that she knew she would be charged with attempted murder.
The state is expected to rest its case Thursday, and closing arguments should come on Friday. Judge Charles E. Roberts is presiding over the case.
