Amanda Jo Stott-Smith Jail Booking Report
Portland, Oregon (The Weekly Vice) -- Amanda Jo Stott-Smith, a 31-year-old Oregon mother was arrested Saturday after allegedly throwing her two children off a bridge, killing her 4-year-old son.
According to police, Stott-Smith was taken into custody at a downtown parking garage, nearly seven hours after witnesses heard the screams of her children as they fell from the Sellwood Bridge in Portland.
Upon hearing the screams around 1 a.m., citizen Patti Carr summoned help and assisted in the search for the children who were eventually found an hour later in the Willamette river.
Dave Haag and friend Cheryl Robb used a houseboat to search for the children. They followed the howling screams to discover a 4-year-old boy floating face down in the frigid water. The boy's 7-year-old sister was discovered barely alive - struggling with what may have been her final breaths. Robb steered the boat while Haag dove into the water to retrieve the girl.
Both children were pulled into the boat and taken to the dock at the Oregon Yacht Club.
Police tried to resuscitate the boy, Eldon Jay Rebhan Smith, however they were unable to revive him. The girl, who's identity has been withheld, was rushed to a local hospital where she is expected to survive.
Seven hours after the children's discovery, authorities located the mother, Amanda Jo Stott-Smith - who threatened to jump off the ninth floor of a Portland parking garage. She was taken into custody after detectives pulled her away from the ledge.
Investigators say Stott-Smith had recently filed for divorce from her husband in March and has a prior police record that includes throwing "lighted objects" and numerous speeding and parking tickets. Other children in her care have been taken into protective custody.
Stott-Smith was charged Sunday morning with aggravated murder in the death of her son and attempted aggravated murder for her daughter's near drowning. She is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon
The Weekly Vice Opinion:
The photo above is the actual bridge the children are believed to have fallen from. Look closely at the drop from that bridge. As a reader pointed out, the clearance of the bridge is about 75 feet plus the distance from the bottom of the bridge to the road. It's really a miracle the little girl survived this fall, let alone trying to swim in frigid water for an hour.
Portland police say they received numerous calls about the screaming from both sides of the river - followed by a response from citizen volunteers who basically did the impossible in the black of night.
Those volunteers and alert residents are nothing short of heroes in our book. We thank all of you for saving this child's life.
Danny Vice
The Weekly Vice
http://www.theweeklyvice.com
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13 comments:
They should take her and throw her off the damn bridge, and not bother to ever look for her again!! What a horrible human being!!
Thank god for the people who called the police when they heard the screams.
Well, there comes a time when you have to kick the children out of the nest... Oh nevermind... that's for the birds.
"...Amanda Jo Stott-Smith - who threatened to jump off the ninth floor of a Portland parking garage." Stop stopping these kind of people.
it always irks me when they look "so distraught" in there mugshots.. its like, stop crying you dumb bitch cuz NOBODY feels sorry for you!
I hope the 7 year old makes a full recovery and find a good home.
for the "mom", i can only hope you get whats coming to you...
I can't imagine how the 7yo will feel knowing her mom tried to kill her! What a sick woman she is..no sympathy! I hope she gets her ass kicked in jail.
this reminds me of a tragedy in Sidney when a distraught and very disturbed man threw his 4 year old daughter over a bridge...
I agree with Ida and will go one step further... cops should have helped jump off the ninth floor.
Almost everyone here has decided to play the part of angel of death and punish this woman for her horrible crime. Yes, she is a complete waste of space for killing her children, in reading the story though I see that this woman has had numerous arrests for 'throwing lighted objects' as well as speeding and parking tickets. One dead 4 year old and a hospitalized 7 year old later I am wondering why no one decided she was worth taking a look at long before. People, we have to start paying attention to the warning signs, instead of laughing at and pushing aside people with signs of mental problems we need to push for the state to evaluate these people, many tragedies can be averted when we ask why in behavior instead of laughing it away. What a tragedy.
@anon... I don't see anyone laughing this case away - but take note, this woman had filed for divorce and who would be more qualified to bring concerns to the courts attention than the husband she was divorcing.
In our system, we are told to butt out, mind your own business and not to judge. That's how situations like this fester.
In florida, there are endless numbers of people showing "warning signs" of having severe mental problems... Police would have to investigate half the state.
But you are right, people should pay closer attention to problem areas. This is one of the purposes of this site - to demonstrate how cases like this come to fruition, thus highlighting those "warning signs" everyone eventually encounters in a friend, coworker, relative or spouse.
Unfortunately, in America people have a right to be crazy... you can't just lock them away for it, or take their kids away for it. At least not until a pattern of abuse has been established... I'm not sure what the 'lighted objects' were but it doesn't sound like child abuse to me.
Some people are just wrong, they do wrong things and they deserve to be punished, crazy or not. Most particularly, people who do wrong things to their children.
Look at it this way, if she really is crazy and she really can be reabilitated what can of life could she lead once she is well and has an understanding of what she'd done to her child... speaking as a mother of three, I would RATHER be dead than to live with that sort of guilt... So really I feel my opinion is both merciful and practical.
This reminds me of a case we had here in MN. A few years ago, a Mom jumped off a bridge with her twin sons, Sincere & Supreme, during the Taste of MN festival (the festival takes place on an island below the bridge). Festival attendees jumped into the Mississippi to save the Family. They were able to save baby Supreme and Mom but Sincere drowned. She pled insanity. She's in prison now. I don't know much more.
What a sad story. Although I reserve the term "hero" for only the most extreme situations, I agree that those who immediately took to the water to save those children are heroes, in every sense of the word.
As for the mother, I suspect she is mentally ill based on stated past history, and it's possible that the divorce was the final straw which caused her to snap. There is however nothing in that history which would suggest to anyone that she was capable of this level of atrocity. That doesn't mean the warning signs weren't there, it just means that if they were, we don't know about them yet.
That doesn't mean she is legally insane, though, because that is a completely different standard which very few mentally ill persons meet. Simply stated, a legally insane person lacks the ability to differentiate between right and wrong at the time the crime is committed.
The question at trial, if she launches an insanity defense, will be whether she understood right from wrong at the very moment she threw her children off the bridge.
A jury is not likely to buy an insanity defense in this case though, given that she didn't jump off the bridge herself. Fleeing to jump off a parking garage doesn't count, due to the fleeing part of the equation which certainly suggests she was in at least some control of her faculties.
My educated guess would be that she threw the children off the bridge to "punish" their father. If so, I would not be averse to the death penalty unless it can be proven that she suffers from a major mental illness which contributed significantly to the crime.
Either way, those poor children couldn't have deserved that, and her little girl will struggle the rest of her life with the knowledge that her own mother tried to kill her. What a terrible tragedy.
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