Fatal Distraction
By: Gene Weingarten
Lead paragraph: The charge in the courtroom was manslaughter, brought by the Commonwealth of Virginia. No significant facts were in dispute. Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable
person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until
the day last summer -- beset by problems at work, making call after
call on his cellphone -- he forgot to drop his son, Chase, at day care.
The toddler slowly sweltered to death, strapped into a car seat for
nearly nine hours in an office parking lot in Herndon in the blistering
heat of July.
Descriptive Writing: The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the
gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larger still. He hunched
forward in the sturdy wooden armchair that barely contained him, sobbing
softly into tissue after tissue, a leg bouncing nervously under the
table.In the first pew of spectators sat his wife, looking stricken, absently
twisting her wedding band. The room was a sepulcher. Witnesses spoke
softly of events so painful that many lost their composure. When a
hospital emergency room nurse described how the defendant had behaved
after the police first brought him in, she wept. He was virtually
catatonic, she remembered, his eyes shut tight, rocking back and forth,
locked away in some unfathomable private torment. He would not speak at
all for the longest time, not until the nurse sank down beside him and
held his hand. It was only then that the patient began to open up, and
what he said was that he didn't want any sedation, that he didn't
deserve a respite from pain, that he wanted to feel it all, and then to
die.
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