Raleigh, North Carolina, father Alan Tysheen Eugene Lassiter called police Sunday night shortly after allegedly throwing his two daughters in a lake to drown them, the New York Post reports. Upon arrival, the deputy spotted a 5-year-old girl floating and crying, while her 3-year-old sister was already completely submerged.
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Lassiter, who waited passively by the pond as police arrived, was charged with three counts of attempted murder: one count for each of the girls and a third for their 7-year-old brother.
Lassiter’s initial court appearance came Monday morning before District Court Judge Brian Wilks, who set bond at $2 million and agreed to appoint a public defender for him.
Durham County Sheriff’s Deputy David Earp who pulled two young girls and one boy from the pond whom their father tried to kill them- says a source.
Scott said Lassiter initially told her he was searching for his kidnapped 7-year-old son Sunday night.
Orange evidence flags line the shore of a pond in the Audubon Lake neighborhood of Durham, N.C. on Tuesday, September 22, 2015.
“The investigation is ongoing at this time”, she said.
“All I was trying to do was get help”, the caller said.
Earp said the girls were about 10 feet from a bank that slopes sharply down to the pond, which is about as long as a football field.
The two girls were given CPR and taken to a local hospital. “All I did was try to go get help … because I was dealing with some [inaudible] things, OK?” he said.
Earp says he plunged into water about 5 feet deep and scooped them up, holding one in each arm. As the deputy retrieved the girls, Lassiter stood nearby smoking a cigarette. “So, I dropped some of my equipment and I immediately just ran into the water and grabbed both of them”.
He was telling the dispatcher on the other end of the line that he had just tried to drown his children in a pond and he was so distraught and disoriented that he couldnt describe where he was.
He added, ‘When it was all going on, I had tunnel vision.
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“It plays over in my mind a lot, as I’m sure with any person”, Earp said. Earp- 26, who has no children of his own, says the life or death episode continues to be repeated for him.
