A Summerdale father is facing a reckless manslaughter charge after his infant son died from injuries suffered while the child was in his care, a case that has split investigators and the family’s defense attorney over whether it was a tragic accident or a crime.
John Albert McCord III, 37, was watching his 11-month-old son, John Henry Watson McCord, along with his 4-year-old stepson, Ryder Nease, at a Summerdale home in mid-May. According to a police affidavit, McCord left the two boys alone together in a bathtub full of water. The affidavit states the baby slipped under the water while his older brother tried to hold him up and repeatedly called out for help, but no one responded to the boy’s cries.
The infant died at a Mobile hospital the following day, just three days shy of his first birthday. About ten days later, Summerdale police arrested McCord and charged him with reckless manslaughter, along with possession of drug paraphernalia, chemical endangerment of a child and possession of a controlled substance.
The Investigation and the Drug Questions
Baldwin County District Attorney Hallie Dixon said the investigation is examining whether drug use played a role in McCord’s actions that day. Officials said a search of the Summerdale home turned up drugs and drug paraphernalia, and records showed McCord had been diagnosed with polysubstance abuse and psychosis in the weeks before his son’s death.
Those findings are central to how prosecutors frame the case. Reckless manslaughter under Alabama law turns on whether a defendant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk — a question that turns on what the parent knew, what was reasonable in the circumstances and what choices were made in the minutes that mattered. Prosecutors argue that leaving an infant and a 4-year-old alone in a tub of water, whatever else was happening in the home, meets that standard. The defense contests that characterization entirely.
The Defense Account
McCord’s attorney, Pascal Bruijn, disputes the police account, saying his client had briefly stepped out of the bathroom to retrieve a fresh towel and returned only after his stepson told him what had happened. Bruijn argues the evidence, even if accurate, points to a tragic accident or, at worst, a lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide — not manslaughter.
The distinction between the two charges is more than semantic. Criminally negligent homicide involves a failure to perceive a substantial risk that a reasonable person would have perceived; reckless manslaughter involves awareness of the risk and disregard of it. Bruijn’s argument is that a parent stepping away for a moment to grab a towel, without more, is negligence at most — an accident with terrible consequences, not a crime of disregard. Prosecutors see the same facts and reach the opposite conclusion, which is why the case was charged as it was.
Bruijn also maintains the drug charges are unrelated to the child’s death. The defense position separates the two sets of allegations: whatever the search of the home turned up, it says nothing about the state of mind of a father in the bathroom that afternoon, and it should not be allowed to color the question of what happened to the child.
The Family’s Loss
The infant’s mother, Jessica McCord, 37, was not home at the time and has not been charged in her son’s death. She was arrested on the same drug-related charges as the father, according to authorities, leaving a family grieving a baby’s death while navigating criminal cases on both sides.
The case has drawn attention across Baldwin County, where the deaths of young children under ambiguous circumstances strike a particularly raw nerve. For investigators, such cases require balancing a community’s demand for accountability against the reality that bathtubs are among the most common sites of accidental child drowning in America, and that the line between an accident and a crime is drawn by state of mind — the hardest thing in any criminal case to prove.
The timeline so far traces the anatomy of such an investigation. Mid-May: a father is watching two boys; an infant slips beneath bathwater; a 4-year-old cries out for help; a hospital in Mobile fights through the following day, and the baby — three days short of his first birthday — dies. Within days, police secure and search the Summerdale home, develop the account set out in the affidavit, and present the case. About ten days after the death, the arrest follows, with the manslaughter count at its center and the drug-related charges attached.
What comes next will be decided in a Baldwin County courtroom, where the same set of facts will be argued twice — once as evidence of a father who ignored a deadly risk, and once as evidence of a family catastrophe that outpaced a parent’s worst mistake. Between those two versions of the afternoon lies everything this case will turn on.
How Bathtub Drowning Cases Are Prosecuted
Cases arising from a child’s drowning or near-drowning in a bathtub occupy some of the most difficult ground in criminal law. Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death for young children nationwide, and infants can lose consciousness in moments and in only a few inches of water. Most such deaths result in no charges at all; prosecutors typically file criminal cases when the evidence suggests more than a momentary lapse — a pattern of unsafe supervision, impairment, an unattended child left for an extended period, or circumstances that made the danger obvious.
That is why the affidavit’s account matters so much in this case. The claim that a baby slipped under water while a 4-year-old tried to hold him up and called repeatedly for help, unanswered, paints a picture of a prolonged and audible emergency. If a jury accepts that sequence of events as true, the question becomes what a reasonable parent would have perceived and responded to. If the defense’s shorter timeline is accurate — a parent out of the room for the time it takes to fetch a towel — the same facts support an accidental death finding.
The presence of the 4-year-old stepbrother adds another painful layer. Young children cannot be expected to supervise infants, and child welfare professionals consistently warn that no child under school age should be left responsible for a baby in water under any circumstances. The boy’s attempts to hold his brother up and call for help will be part of the record forever, and counselors who work with children in these situations note that surviving siblings often carry guilt that requires years of care.
The Charges and What Each Means
Reckless manslaughter carries substantial prison exposure under Alabama law and reflects the prosecution’s view that McCord was aware of the risk and ignored it. Chemical endangerment of a child, the charge attached to the conditions found in the home, alleges exposing a child to an environment involving controlled substances. The paraphernalia and controlled substance counts flow from the search of the house itself.
Bruijn’s push toward criminally negligent homicide, if successful, would reflect a jury’s finding that McCord failed to perceive a risk rather than knowingly disregarded one — a materially different moral judgment and a sharply different sentencing range. The gap between the two charges is precisely where this case will be fought: in the space between “did not see it coming” and “should have known and did not care.”
Prosecutors will also have to untangle the drug evidence from the drowning evidence. Records of a polysubstance abuse and psychosis diagnosis in the weeks before the death will be part of the state’s context, and Dixon’s office has said it is examining whether drug use played a role in McCord’s actions that day. The defense will press to keep the drug counts treated as separate matters rather than as proof of impairment on the afternoon in question.
Summerdale and the County’s Response
Summerdale is a small town in southern Baldwin County, and cases of this kind ripple through communities where everyone knows someone connected to the family. The investigation moved from the local police department to the district attorney’s office within days, the standard path in Baldwin County for child deaths, which typically draws involvement from investigators who specialize in crimes against children.
Baldwin County prosecutors have made child abuse and endangerment cases a visible priority, and the district attorney’s office maintains that expertise in-house. Cases are charged only after investigators reconstruct the timeline through medical records, scene evidence and interviews — a process that explains the roughly ten days between the infant’s death and McCord’s arrest.
For the family, the criminal process will unfold over months or longer, through preliminary hearings, motion practice and, ultimately, either a trial or a resolution. For the community, the case stands as a reminder of how quickly ordinary routines — bath time, a towel, a moment away — can become the subject of a manslaughter prosecution, and of how heavily the consequences of those moments weigh on everyone left behind, including a 4-year-old boy who tried to hold his baby brother above the water.