CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A 3-year-old boy and his siblings were playing on a Charlotte airport escalator for an hour before the boy fell, court records obtained by WCNC NBC Charlotte reveal.
The child, identified as 3-year-old Jaiden Cowart, died days later from injuries he sustained in the fall. At the time, the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner's Office described the cause of death as "blunt force injuries, fall from height."
The court records describe surveillance video, which shows Jaiden and his siblings played on the steps and hand rails of the moving escalator for approximately one hour.
"Often times, each child is tripping, and falling on the escalator stairs, and crawling to get off," the court documents said. "(Their mother) is not observed at any point on the surveillance, retrieving her children from the escalator."
Court records show a bystander caught Cowart's sister as she fell from the escalator, but was unable to catch the 3-year-old.
Before Lightner turned herself into police, her attorney, Michael Greene, told WCNC NBC Charlotte, "She's a single mother that was watching three children at an airport and I think the circumstances could have happened to a number of us."
Greene said Lightner she was near her children arranging transportation as an escalator handrail pulled her son up to the top where he fell. He is raising questions about what he considers a dangerous gap between many of the airports escalators and stairwells.
"Unfortunately, at this particular location there was no barrier that was forbidding a young child, any kind of attractive nuisance from coming in and playing in between those areas," Greene said. "This wasn't an instance where she was not paying attention to her children."
Lightner has been charged with three counts of child neglect.
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