TORPY: Suspect in iffy child-snatching case sits in jail as DA drags feet

She added, “To take someone’s freedom away should not be done flippantly by a district attorney — Democrat or Republican. While this is not an election issue, we are stepping in because it is simply the right thing to do.”

On Friday, Cobb Democratic chair Essence Johnson stepped in and urged District Attorney Sonya Allen, a Democrat elected last fall, to, “in the name of due process, drop all charges and release Mr. Mahendra Patel — an innocent man who remains unjustly incarcerated.”

Johnson told me, “It’s the one thing we agree upon. This is not Democrat or Republican issue; this is a human rights issue. What’s right is right. What’s wrong is wrong.”

Patel’s arrest originally made a TV news splash in March when Acworth police alleged he tried to pull a 2-year-old from his mother’s arms in a Walmart. The woman, Caroline Miller, even went on TV to describe a tug-of-war with a strange man to rescue her child.

From the start, this smelled fishy.

The number of times strangers have kidnapped toddlers from mothers’ arms in well-lit retail superstores with security cameras can be counted on one hand with digits left over.

Credit: WSB-TV

Credit: WSB-TV

Acworth cops said he “fled” after the alleged crime. But videos released by Walmart to Patel’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, tell a different story.

There are 20 videos showing Patel in the store. I’ve watched them all, and as I wrote previously, this was no attempted kidnapping.

A video of the “snatching” attempt shows Patel’s back as he’s facing the mom, who was riding a motorized cart for disabled people with her young daughter and son. Miller, who is not disabled, has said her kids like to wheel around the store in one.

Patel was wandering the aisles looking for Tylenol and asked her where it might be. She pointed from her scooter to show him and he leaned in toward her for perhaps five seconds.

He told his lawyer he thought Miller was disabled and the boy was falling, so he reached out to prevent it. No struggle is evident.

Patel then strolled the aisle and Miller smiled and talked to another shopper, a man who was about 6 feet away, before rolling about her business. Patel walks past her, fetches a Walmart employee to help find the Tylenol and walks by the mom again. He then walks past her a third time to show her he finally found it.

Credit: Courtesy

Credit: Courtesy

Then Patel checked out, using his own credit card, and stopped to chat with the Walmart door attendant for 25 seconds before slowly “fleeing” to his car.

Merchant said her team has spoken with the shopper near the mom and the employee who helped Patel. “They said if they saw something, they would have stepped in,” she said.

In a legal motion filed Friday, prosecutors — again — asked a judge to order Merchant to stop speaking publicly about the case.

In that motion, prosecutors showed a glimpse of their case. They say the mother said she was pointing toward the Tylenol when Patel reached out to grab her son. She said she pulled him back and Patel told her, “I was getting him out of your lap so you could get up and help me.”

Prosecutors said Patel told police a similar version.

If that’s the DA’s case, if that’s the best they got, then it’s a simple misunderstanding. Not a kidnapping attempt.

So why would a busy DA‘s office that has recently lost numerous veteran prosecutors push so hard to keep this case alive? And jail a man for weeks without bond?

It’s a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, smothered, I believe, by a stubbornness rooted in previous, and bitter, legal battles. Merchant has accused the Acworth police, who arrested Patel, of juicing up their arrest warrant and Facebook media post against him.

Acworth’s finest have told me they were just doing their jobs.

DA Allen‘s chief assistant is a veteran prosecutor named Jesse Evans. Evans was a Cobb prosecutor for years and left the office in 2021 to be police chief in … Acworth.

He returned to the Cobb DA‘s office after Allen‘s election.

Evans bumped heads with Merchant in 2018, accusing her and another lawyer of forcing a mistrial in a murder case with a Facebook post. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get a judicial gag order on her in that case.

Credit: Cobb County video

Credit: Cobb County video

For years, Merchant’s aggressiveness has caused drama in various jurisdictions.

Most recently, there were unpleasantries down in Atlanta when Merchant went for the jugular and torpedoed the racketeering election case against Donald Trump and his merry band of minions.Merchant discovered Fulton D.A. Fani Willis’ special prosecutor in that case, a dashing attorney named Nathan Wade, also served as her boyfriend.

The state appeals court removed Willis from the case, effectively killing it if not reversed by the state Supreme Court.

So why does this matter in Cobb?

Well, Allen worked for Willis in Fulton before her election as Cobb DA and had a hand in that case before Wade stepped in. Willis also cut a campaign ad for Allen in her Democratic primary last year. Allen later called Willis one of her “anchors” after being sworn in. She said the same about Wade.

They, too, have a longtime professional relationship, as he has played a key role on her transition team.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

Also, in 2020, Allen worked as the Cobb sheriff’s chief deputy when she brought in Wade to investigate deaths at the jail. It was an election year and the prisoner deaths were messy for Allen‘s boss, then-Sheriff Neil Warren. He ultimately lost.

In 2020, 11Alive News brought Wade to court, seeking records of his investigation, but he said he had none. They were all in his mind, he said.

Wade’s jail investigation was said to to be pro bono, but Merchant discovered he was getting paid $550 an hour.

I asked Merchant if Patel’s treatment is payback for previous hostilities.

“I’d hope that would not (factor in),” she said. “But people have biases. There’s a lot of animosity.”

Prosecutors are invested with grave responsibilities that affects citizens’ freedoms and even their lives. Grudge matches, if this is that, are antithetical to justice.

Both DA Allen and attorney Merchant are sworn to seek the truth. This one seems very clear.