The district attorney won't file charges against the man arrested in the disappearance of his fiancee's disabled foster child.
That word crossed the wires early Tuesday morning.
Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Tom Rogers says there's insufficient evidence against Louis Ross in the Aug. 10 disappearance of Hasanni Campbell.
Rogers says the 38-year-old Ross was released Tuesday.
Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said Tuesday that investigators know the child was not in Oakland on Aug. 10.
Also Tuesday, police also released surveillance footage from a Wal-Mart store in Fremont recorded on Aug. 6 that they say it is the last known sighting of the boy.
An attorney who has consulted with the foster parents of the 5-year-old old, who was reported missing three weeks ago and is now believed to have been murdered, said Monday that he was "glad" that no charges were being filed against the foster mother either. Burris said police rushed to judgment in an effort to get new information in the case.
A police search warrant affidavit indicated Ross sent an expletive-filled text message to Campbell 10 days before the boy went missing, threatening to leave him alone on a BART platform.
Sherri-Lyn Miller, a volunteer whose company has created T-shirts and fliers during the search, said the focus should be on locating Hasanni, not on Ross and Campbell.
"We're not going to treat him as a homicide victim like the police because we don't know that yet," Miller said. "It's time to bring this baby home."
Burris said Monday he was not surprised that the DA's office wasn't filing charges against 30-year-old Jennifer Campbell, the boy's foster mother and aunt, because he believes "there was no factual basis for her to be arrested."
Burris said being arrested was traumatic for Campbell, who is six months pregnant, and caused her "a great deal of emotional harm."
The boy, who has cerebral palsy, was reported missing from the parking lot of the Shuz of Rockridge shoe store in the 6000 block of College Avenue in Oakland at about 4:15 p.m. on Aug. 10.
Ross was arrested at about 2:45 p.m. Friday at the home at 5997 Roxie Terrace in Fremont where he and Campbell lived with Hasanni and another child.
Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason said Friday that police are no longer considering the case to be a missing-persons case and instead are investigating it as a homicide.
Burris said he thinks that that the Oakland Police Department arrested Campbell as "a tactic to intimidate her to talk" and disclose incriminating evidence against Ross.
He said, "She hadn't done anything wrong but the police didn't accept that."
Bay City News
