Mother pleads for investigation to be reopened in her son’s 2015 drowning death

The mother of a three-year-old boy who drowned in 2015 at Lake Tobesofkee wept during a Monday news conference as her attorney asked that the district attorney reopen the investigation into the boy’s death and file criminal charges against his father.

Jenean Winston filed a wrongful death lawsuit in August against her ex-husband, Mark Anthony Walsh, alleging Walsh was negligent. She is seeking damages from what she contends was her son’s preventable death.

Dylan Walsh, 3, was with his father at the Fish N’ Pig lakeside restaurant Aug. 1, 2015, when Dylan went missing. His body was found the next morning underneath a dock at the restaurant.

“My life has been forever changed,” Winston said, standing with her attorney and a representative of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Action Network. “I have to live without my son.”

The Atlanta chapter took on the case in December 2016 and helped link Winston with a national pro bono law firm, according to a news release.

District Attorney David Cooke also held a news conference Monday and said the facts of the case didn’t support charges.

Both he and Sheriff David Davis said if there had been evidence for criminal charges, they would have been pursued.

Cooke said witnesses from the dock describe Walsh as being “very attentive to his son” and him holding Dylan’s hand or being with him right up until the moment he began running and screaming, looking for his son.

Evidence suggests Dylan slipped off the dock while Walsh turned to shake hands with a boat owner and that Walsh discovered his son was missing almost immediately afterward, Cooke said.

Walsh helped in the search and dove into the water with others trying to find Dylan. He stayed at the scene and answered authorities’ questions for 11 hours until after Dylan’s body was found the next day, Cooke said.

Cooke said the sheriff’s office did not find “probable cause” to seek an arrest warrant and he agrees with that decision.

Winston has alleged in her lawsuit that her ex-husband racked up a $125 bar tab while his son was at the restaurant and in his care. After Dylan was found, Walsh left the country.

Although Walsh has returned to Macon in the past two years, he hasn’t been located to be served with a copy of the lawsuit, said Andrew Tate, Winston’s lawyer.

Tate questioned whether racial bias or lazy police work may have contributed to the decision not to take the case to a grand jury for an indictment.

Dylan was born to a black mother and a white father, he said.

Cooke said the case is a tragedy, but every tragedy isn’t a crime.

“In this case, as with all cases, we follow the evidence wherever it leads us. The facts and the facts alone determine whether or not a person is charged with a crime,” he said.

Walsh’s drinking didn’t appear to be a factor in his son’s death, Cooke said.

Tate and Winston attended Cooke’s news conference and offered a rebuttal afterward.

“There’s still time to do the right thing. Reopen it. Take a look at it please,” Tate said, disputing Cooke’s interpretation of the evidence and again asking for the case to be reopened.

This story was originally published September 25, 2017 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Mother pleads for investigation to be reopened in her son’s 2015 drowning death."