The young Afton man accused with his baby’s mother of abusively killing their child in December allegedly caused a car crash in Albemarle County the following month that got his father-in-law in legal trouble.
During a hit-and-run investigation in early January, police say that 20-year-old Ethan William Garfield let 47-year-old father-in-law Charles Jayson Woods take the blame for the crash, and Woods wound up getting arrested for providing false information.
"He said they lost a baby a few weeks back and was trying to help him," state trooper G. Aaron McCoy wrote in a criminal complaint.
The father-in-law, a former senior locksmith at the University of Virginia now working for a Crozet-based tourism firm, was not the errant driver, McCoy said he learned on the way to taking Woods to jail. That was when Woods allegedly confessed to covering for Garfield.
The trouble began on Jan. 4 on Interstate 64 at mile marker 110.7 just outside Crozet. Arriving to the crash scene around 2:35 p.m., McCoy said he found a BMW partially in the left lane with two people in pain and advising him that the young man driving the truck had fled.
After obtaining the suspect’s description and the truck’s license plate number, McCoy headed to the vehicle’s registered address in Crozet. There he said he found Garfield working on the damaged vehicle. After Garfield denied driving the truck, McCoy questioned Woods.
"He said he’d been driving it all day," McCoy wrote.
While Woods’s alleged effort to help his son-in-law got him charged with a misdemeanor of obstructing justice, the Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office ultimately motioned to dismiss the charge against the older man. Albemarle County General District Court Judge Matthew Quatrara approved the dismissal May 19.
Such was not the case for the hit-and-run charge McCoy lodged against Garfield. That felony case remains active with its next hearing slated for June 12.
That charge, however, may be the least of Garfield’s troubles. He and 18-year-old Autumn Grace Woods were arrested May 20 and charged with felony homicide for the death of their 6-week-old infant son, Cyrus James Garfield.
Virginia law equates felony homicide to second-degree murder and prescribes a punishment of five to 40 years. The law was designed for instances in which the death was not intended but instead flowed from felonious actions.
The baby died Dec. 14. His death came four days after emergency responders transported an unresponsive infant from a residence on Taylors Creek Road in Afton, according to a statement from Nelson County Sheriff Mark Embrey.
Following an autopsy finalized in March, UVa medical experts reviewed that report along with other medical records and found the child’s injuries consistent with child abuse, according to Embrey.
The pair remain held without bail at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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