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PHOTO COURTESY OF WCSO
A Cordell woman could spend life behind bars after her arrest last month. Ashley Potter was charged with one felony count of child abuse after her seven-year-old stepdaughter was taken to the hospital.
According to the affidavit of probable cause filed by Officer Adam Hopper, Hopper was notified by a staff member at Cordell Memorial Hospital on June 17 of a possible child abuse case.
Potter and father of the girl Trevor Goodwin had brought her into the emergency room where hospital staff noticed bruises on the girl's face and ears.
Hopper was told that a hospital staff member had previously been instructed to call the police if they suspected anything after one of their other children had been brought into the hospital.
That same staff member informed Hopper that they had seen Potter hit the girl in the face several times and that Potter would also yank on the girl's ear while on the front porch of their home.
According to Hopper’s report, this was backed up by video evidence the staff member had taken that showed Potter, on her front porch, “screaming in [the girl’s] face, also yelling obscenities…, backhand slapping [the girl] in the facial area, yanking on her left arm, poking [the girl] in the facial area, raising her hand like she [was] going to slap the [the girl] again, and then at the end of the video open hand slapping [the girl] in the back of the head.”
Hopper then visited with the girl where he was then shown the bruising on both of her ears, left temple, right upper cheek, right lower cheek, and a scratch on the left lower cheek.
When asked by a staff member about the bruises on her ears, the girl reportedly said that Potter had caused them “to make her come to her.”
Hopper went on to place the girl in protective custody and contacted DHS. DHS then informed Hopper of another open investigation against Potter following a previous call made by a physician in Elk City involving Goodwin’s youngest daughter.
The report states that another hospital staff member later informed Hopper that they had spoken with the girl in the ER and she said she “seemed scared” when asked how things at home were. The girl told the staff member the reason for being scared was that she “was scared of being locked up in her room all the time and that when she was locked in her room she would only be let out to use the bathroom.”
Hopper interviewed both Potter and Goodwin separately on-site and asked both to explain to him what had been going on. Goodwin stated that three weeks ago the girl “had been beating on her sister” and they had taken her “to get help.” While doing so both Goodwin and Potter had to “rush back due to one of their kids getting into a bottle of Tylenol.” Potter gave a similar statement when asked what had been going on and said the girl had admitted to giving her sister the Tylenol.
Goodwin stated that incidents such as this only happened when the girl was out of her room and as a result he installed four locks on the door so that she was unable to get out.
When asked if he had noticed any marks on the girl, Goodwin stated that he knew about her lip, and mentioned a medical condition and a bruise. He stated he did not know of any marks on her but that he “would spank her on her butt”, “put her in time out”, or both but that he had not noticed any marks.
While giving her statement, Potter reportedly got emotional and stated that “her two-year-old and three-year-old were scared and having night terrors that [the girl] would hurt them again.”
Potter then mentioned in the report other instances in which the girl had reportedly hit her siblings and that Potter had “made it so that [the girl] has no other contact with the kids”, which was accomplished by having Goodwin put the locks on the girl’s door.
When initially asked about the bruises on the girl, Potter reportedly “became emotional again” and changed the topic. When asked about the bruises again, Potter stated that the only ones she knew of were a scratch on the cheek and bruise next to the girl's right eye.
When asked about marks on the girl’s back, Potter asked what marks Hopper was referring to and that she “had the marks on her back from zip ties on the slip and slide.”
Hopper informed Potter that marks on the girl’s back were fresh, to which Potter stated that one of the other kids had “scratched her or hit her sometime Saturday night and she wasn’t there because she was upstairs”.
Once Laura Smalling of DHS arrived, she began to interview witnesses. When talking to the ER physician on call, he stated that he had called this situation in because “the bruises and marks on the girl’s back [were] not adding up with the story and that they were indicative of child abuse in his opinion.”
Both Potter and Goodwin were then asked to be interviewed at the Sheriff’s office. While there Smalling interviewed them both separately.
Potter and Goodwin gave a more detailed description about the girl’s door and its locks, in which Potter stated the door “was a half-door and that they only locked the whole door top and bottom the last few nights out of safety concerns, and that [the girl] could yell for her grandma if she needed to use the restroom.”
When Goodwin was asked about the locked door, he stated that only the bottom part of the door is locked during the day.
After the interviews, Potter was officially given a felony charge of one count of child abuse on June 18 for willfully/maliciously causing bruising to the girl’s ears, left temple, right upper and lower cheek, and a scratch on her lower left cheek.
DHS coordinated a safety plan for the girl with her biological mother’s mom and grandma.
A home visit and welfare check were also conducted that day, and Hopper stated in his report that the home was found in “complete disarray.”
“There was trash piled in every room[.] Flies, bugs, and roaches crawling on the floors and cabinets,” he wrote, “and the house had a terrible smell to it.”
DHS coordinated a safety plan for both of Goodwin’s children with a follow-up the next day for the other children pending another inspection to see if significant changes were made to the home.
Potter has a scheduled preliminary hearing on September 7th, 2021.