Collin County Father Acquitted in Son's Hot Car Death

A North Texas jury has acquitted a father of manslaughter in the death of his two-year-old son, who was found unresponsive in the family car on a summer day.

Joshua Cartee was acquitted Thursday of manslaughter and one count of criminally negligent homicide. The jury could not reach a verdict on a second count of criminally negligent homicide, forcing a mistrial.

Jurors told NBC 5 that the split in the jury room over whether to convict was 11 in favor of convicting to one holdout against.

Prosecutors say they'll pursue a new trial on the remaining count in April.

In September 2013, 2-year-old Jorden Cartee let himself of the family's Anna home while Joshua Cartee was asleep. Jorden crawled into the family's car parked in the driveway and was later found unconscious there. He died four days later.

Prosecutors charged that Cartee's negligence had led to his son's death, saying he had failed to lock the home's doors to prevent Jorden from leaving and had failed to call police for more than an hour after realizing he was missing, instead searching the acres around the rural home by himself.

Although locks had been installed less than two months earlier during a CPS investigation, and although the family had signed a safety plan with the agency promising to supervise the boy and lock the doors, the locks were not fastened when the boy left the home, prosecutors said.

The family has maintained the boy's death was a tragic accident. Cartee's defense attorney David Kleckner said his client was a “frantic parent,” not a reckless one.

Jennifer Kindle, Cartee’s wife and Jorden’s mother, said the family has not been able to fully mourn the loss of their son for a year and a half while going through the legal system.

“It is just great to tell the world that my son was so loved, and not a child that was abused or hurt,” Kindle said. “God took my son, not my husband, and it showed in the court today.”

Cartee’s lawyer, David Kleckner, said the acquittal of the manslaughter charge was a positive step.

“The fact that he was found not guilty of a second degree felony [where] he could have been facing two to 10 years in the penitentiary, that he is not a convicted felon -- that is a great day for him,” Kleckner said. “We’ll be ready for [the second trial].”

A court reissued a $100,000 bond for Cartee on Thursday following the verdict.

His family plans to bond him out of the Collin County as soon as possible.
 

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