'Voices' told mother to drown kids

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 24, 2006 | by Cecily Burt, STAFF WRITER

Within the next 10 minutes, police would receive the 9-1-1 call from a man who said he saw a woman throw two of her children into the Bay before he grabbed his own two young children and quickly left. It was the call that sent San Francisco police Officer Thomas Johnson rushing to the pier.

The man who made the call from the Waterfront Restaurant had returned to the pier and helped Johnson identify Lashuan Harris.

Johnson said he told him that the oldest boy had pleaded with his mother as she held him aloft over the railing, saying, "Mommy don't do it," before she dropped him into the water. The testimony caused several of Harris' family members who were in the audience to weep.

"I asked (her) immediately, 'Where are the babies?' There was no response. I asked again.'Where did you put the babies?'" Johnson recalled. "She responded. 'They're OK. They're with their father.'

"I said did you put your babies in the Bay? She shook her head up and down (in the affirmative) and she said 'Yes.'"

In a videotape aired before the day ended, Harris told San Francisco police homicide Inspectors Daniel Everson and Dennis Maffei that she had spent the day with her children on the waterfront, buying them hot dogs at Pier 39 before they ended up at Pier 7. She told them she heard voices telling her to sacrifice her kids.

The hearing resumes today in Dept. 29.