TACOMA — A federal judge is expected to decide within two weeks whether a lawsuit over the deaths of two boys at the hands of Josh Powell can go forward.
Powell is believed to have killed his wife, Susan Powell, in Utah, in 2009, before moving to Puyallup, where he killed their two young sons with a hatchet and then himself in an explosive house fire in 2012. Before the deaths, Susan’s parents, Charles and Judy Cox, wrangled with Josh Powell over custody of the boys.
A state judge allowed Powell to have supervised visits, and it was during one of those supervised visits that he locked a social worker out and killed the children. The Coxes sued Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services, saying it failed to act on indications that Powell was dangerous. Charles Cox said he warned the state two days before the killings that Powell was dangerous.
U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton heard arguments in the case Thursday in Tacoma, KIRO-TV reported.
Attorneys for the state want the lawsuit dismissed. The state is immune from liability, they argued, noting that case workers were implementing an order from a judge that the visitation occur. They also said there’s no record of the phone call by Cox or a warning by Pierce County Sheriff’s detectives that Powell was a danger to his sons as Cox claimed.
“This was a hunch that he was a very dangerous person,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Helmberger said. “Well of course he was a very dangerous person. That was everybody’s hunch. But you need evidence in order to move forward.”
Cox’s lawyers said they want the case to move forward. “We have to hold people accountable when children die, especially when they die at the hands of their father with a hatchet,” attorney Anne Bremner said.
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