By Kate Harrison
The Chattanooga Times Free Press
BRADLEY COUNTY, Tenn. — The grandfather’s panicked voice cracks as he shouts into the phone. Both boys are red, and one is turning purple.
“My daughter’s kids ... one of them’s not breathing. She thinks he might already be dead!” he cries to the dispatcher.
The mother, heard in the background, is sobbing uncontrollably.
The jarring Bradley County 911 recording released Thursday captures the confusion and desperation in the minutes that Tasha Bates and her father, Mike Kile, try to revive 5-year-old Leland and 3-year-old River Bates on June 28.
Both boys died in the following hours, their bodies severely overheated.
The call was made public after Bates was arrested Wednesday, indicted on murder, child neglect and methamphetamine-related charges in connection with the boys’ deaths.
Officials say Leland and River died in a car, while Bates, 26, has said they were playing outside on a Slip’n Slide water toy while she was inside the family’s nearby house.
“OK, were they in a pool or pond, something?” the dispatcher asks in the call. Kile shouts the question to his daughter, and she screams back “No!”
“Well then, where were they at?” Kile asks, frustration and distress building in his voice. Bates replies that they were out in the front yard, playing.
“They were out there playing and what happened?” he yells.
“I don’t know!” his daughter cries.
The 10-minute phone call feels like an eternity as the Bradley County dispatcher tries to coax the grandfather to show his daughter how to do CPR on the boys.
“Listen, if there’s a chance, we’ve gotta do something, OK?” the dispatcher repeats.
Kile’s voice breaks as he says he thinks the “little one is gone"; Bates weeps and screams.
She has maintained from that day that she left them outside unattended for 45 minutes while the boys played on the Slip’n Slide, according to reports from the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office.
Toward the end of the 911 audio, a first-responder — whose has arrived at the scene — asks the two why the boys are wet.
Kile says there’s a Slip’n Slide at the home, but he doesn’t know why they’re wet. He repeatedly asks Tasha what the boys were doing, and her response isn’t clear.
The indictment includes no information on what leads investigators to believe the boys were left in a car, and investigators have refused to release any information surrounding the charges, though the indictment came shortly after a drug task force searched Bates’ home for signs of drug use.
Eric Blach, lead investigator with the Bradley County Medical Examiner’s Office, said officials had their suspicions that the boys had perished in an enclosed space from the start.
“It seemed very unlikely to us that these children could have a temperature of 105-plus from being outside when the ambient temperature outside was 101 at best,” he said. “Two children expire, playing outside right out the door? It just sounded funny to us.”
The full autopsies done on the boys have not been released, but Blach has said that their core body temperatures rose to 105 degrees or higher, causing their brains, then their bodies to shut down.
On Wednesday, a Bradley County grand jury charged Bates with two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated child neglect, four counts of the initiation of meth manufacture and the promotion of meth manufacture -- which means she was found with materials to create meth.
“It’s just kinda overwhelming,” the boys’ paternal grandmother, Linda Bates, said Thursday. “There is some relief, but sadness, too. I’m still pretty numb.”
Linda Bates said she believes Tasha Bates had an on-and-off drug habit while she was married to her son. They recently divorced.
Jonathan Bates, the boy’s father, has said that he and Tasha Bates have struggled with drug use in the past. He said he’s recently been in drug rehab.
“I feel like justice will be done for the sake of my family’s sanity, but it still doesn’t take away any of the pain,” he said. “The least [Tasha Bates] could do is to tell us what happened.”
Tasha Bates has several criminal charges on her record, including theft under $500 and domestic assault — both of which were dismissed, Bradley County court records show. Last year, she pleaded guilty to reckless driving.
Her first appearance in Bradley County Criminal Court on the murder and other charges is set for Aug. 13, where she will enter her plea. At this point, she has not acquired an attorney.
Copyright 2012 Chattanooga Publishing Company