No Jail Time for Mom Guilty of Daughter's Death

Acting Westchester County District Attorney James A. McCarty announced that Kathleen Dymes of 144 Hastings Avenue, Croton-on-Hudson, New York, was sentenced today to five years probation after having pleaded guilty on January 19th, 2016 to:

• one count of Criminally Negligent Homicide, a class “E” Felony,
• one count of Endangering the Welfare of a Child, a class “A” Misdemeanor,
• one count of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Seventh Degree, a class “A” Misdemeanor,

relating to the death of her 6-year-old daughter, Lacey Carr.

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On April 5, 2015, Easter Sunday, at 1:09 p.m., the Croton-on-Hudson Police Department received a 911 call from David Carr, the father of the victim, requesting that police respond to 144 Hastings Ave., and reporting that his daughter was cold and not breathing.

On their arrival, police and medical personnel went to the second floor where they discovered Lacey's body lying on a bed unresponsive and not breathing.

Lacey was placed on the floor and CPR was performed.

More personnel arrived and since the child was being treated, they tended to the mother, Dymes, who was in a kneeling position at the side of the bed on the floor. She, too, was unresponsive.

Lacey was pronounced dead at 1:27 p.m. Both the mother and the child’s body were then removed to the Phelps Memorial Hospital.

Croton police initiated an investigation.

Later that day, a search warrant was executed and in the second floor bedroom, where Lacey's body was discovered, police observed an open bottle of alcohol along with various and numerous over the counter, prescription and illegal drugs strewn about the room.

“this defendant failed in her most basic role as a mother and caregiver: to ensure the safety and well-being of her child. As a former nurse, she could know only too well the dosage and interactions of the drugs her daughter had ingested that led to her death,” then-Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore said when Dymes, 52, was indicted.

Assistant District Attorney Doreen Lloyd, Chief of the Child Abuse Bureau, and Assistant District Attorney Owein Levin of the Child Abuse Bureau prosecuted the case.