The husband of a popular influencer whose son drowned in the family pool had left the child outside for nearly ten minutes while he stayed inside watching a basketball game.
Distressing new details emerged in a police report surrounding the death of Emilie and Brady Kiser’s three-year-old son, Trigg, who fell into the pool at their Arizona home back in May.
Brady, 28, was looking after both Trigg and the couple’s newborn son, Theodore, at the time while his wife was out with friends.
According to a report from Chandler Police Department, Brady told officers he had lost sight of the youngster for three to five minutes.
Police said video evidence showed that the boy was left unsupervised for over nine minutes ‘and in the water for about 7 of those minutes’.
It was one of numerous discrepancies highlighted by police in the report.
Brady originally stated that he was sitting in a chair looking out to the yard, but officers noted that the chairs were visible to security cameras and that he never sat in one.
After being questioned about this, Brady told officers, ‘I was sitting on the couch,’ before describing sitting facing the TV with a glass door looking out to the yard to his right.
Brady admitted he was watching an NBA playoff game at the time of the drowning and that that he had placed a $25 bet on the outcome.
‘Brady’s statements do not match what is seen on the video; he did not accurately describe one thing [Trigg] did after he went outside,’ the report noted.
‘This leads to the conclusion that Brady was not aware of what [Trigg] was doing and was not watching him.
‘The combination of these factors led to drowning, and a remedy to any of the contributing circumstances could have prevented the outcome.’
During initial questioning in the wake of Trigg’s death, Brady told police he had been looking away from Trigg for about five minutes.
In a subsequent interview, he said he’d only taken his eye off the boy for ‘moments, not minutes.’ Brady then gave a separate version of events, saying he’d looked away for between three and five minutes.
Asked about the discrepancies, he said it had been difficult for him to estimate exactly how long he had taken his eye off Trigg.
Brady is not facing criminal charges in relation to the death of his son, despite police recommending a felony child abuse charge.
The release of the report comes after Emilie moved to have all information relating to the case sealed.
On Friday, the Maricopa County Superior Court sided with her and ruled that two pages of the report would be shielded from the public.
The report’s contents would only ‘satisfy morbid curiosity’ and ‘would risk exploitation by bad actors,’ read the ruling, viewed by the Daily Mail.
The influencer convinced the judge that allowing the harrowing play-by-play would entice social media sleuths to create AI recreations that would go viral online.
The unredacted police report included a moment-by-moment written depiction of officer bodycam footage that captured Trigg’s death – which the court said was so thorough that it ‘functions as a surrogate for the video itself.’
Its contents are of a ‘vivid and granular nature,’ making it so ’emotionally disturbing’ that shielding it from the public is wholly justified, the ruling stated.
‘Specific material harm to her and her family outweighs the negligible public interest in those particular portions of the report,’ the court declared.
‘The narrow redaction of those sections strikes an appropriate balance between transparency and human dignity.’
Celebrating the small win, Kiser’s attorney, Shannon Clark, told the Daily Mail: ‘We’re grateful to [the judge] for carefully balancing the important interests at stake and allowing a narrow but meaningful redaction to the Chandler police report, removing two pages that detail the graphic final moments of Trigg’s life.
‘These redactions do not alter any material facts of the accident, but they protect the dignity of a little boy whose memory should reflect the love and light he brought to the world.
‘From the start, this has been about protecting Trigg and the family’s ability to grieve privately.
‘This decision allows them, and the public, to remember him for the beautiful life he lived, not the tragic way it ended.’