ANNISTON, Alabama -- A Calhoun County grand jury has indicted an Anniston mother on manslaughter charges in the heat-related death of her four-month-old son.

Staff Sgt. Katherine Papke, 35, was charged with manslaughter and leaving a child unattended following the death of her son, Bennett Owen Smith, Aug. 9. The second charge was later dropped.

Papke's next court date will be her arraignment Dec. 19, according to her attorney, Jim Sturdivant.

Papke said she dropped her other two children off at Sacred Heart Catholic School that morning and drove on to work with her son, nicknamed Bo, in his car seat. However, she went on to work at the McClellan Preparedness Center that morning and worked through lunch.

She said in an interview and through her attorney that she believed she had dropped Bo off at daycare, but discovered him still in the car when she came back to it around 2 p.m. that Friday. Smith was later pronounced dead.



Papke is a soldier with 15 years in the army, having served in Kosovo, two tours in Afghanistan and 15 months in Iraq.

Sturdivant said he was "saddened" by the decision to indict Papke. As he has previously, Sturdivant compared the case to that of Gabriella Gi-Ny Luong, a child discovered by her mother Katie Luong last month in Homewood, still strapped in her car seat in a locked Lexus parked outside the family's Genesis Nail Spa. The mother in that case has not been charged in the child's death.

"This is a tragic accident and nothing more," Sturdivant said. "What happened was a horrific mistake, and it is virtually identical to the tragedy which occurred earlier this year in Homewood...There is no reason why this case - an hour's drive or so away on I-20 - should be treated any differently."