April 22, 2025 • 42 mins
Juliette Acosta is accused of driving drunk with her four-year-old daughter in the back seat of her vehicle when she crashes into a canal filled with water. As the vehicle fills with water, Acosta, 26, gets out of the vehicle with the help of her uncle, but her daughter Reagan is still in the vehicle. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss what happened to Reagan Herrin as water filled the vehicle while her mother fled the scene.
Transcript Highlights
00:06.08 Introduction
02:00.52 Abandon child strapped in a car seat
04:56.63 Reagan Herrin, four years old, left in car
09:57.00 Canals carry lots of water
15:22.10 Juliette Acosta crashed vehicle into a canal
20:24.56 Mother charged with murder
24:49.33 Deputy arrives and pulls girl out of vehicle
28:36.66 Discussion of pictures of Reagan
33:33.62 What will the water do in the vehicle
37:07.22 Reagan was pulled out of vehicle, deputy immediately began performing CPR
42:58.41 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality dators, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know if
it's the way my hands are engineered, or whatever the
case might be. Maybe some of you guys have the
same problem, and it's not something that has corrected itself.
(00:22):
Even when my kids were little and I started trying
to figure out how to use a car seat with them,
it always end in frustration. And you want to be
safe with your children, you know. I remember when my
first child came home from the hospital, I was terrified
(00:43):
I was going to break something, And so that kind
of continues on for a while, you know, And when
you put them in that car seat and you're conveying
them home. First off, it's the most precious thing in
the world, but you're always concerned about safety, and that
continues on for me today. You know. I talk about
my grandbabies, whom I love dearly. I'd rather spend time
(01:09):
with them than mostly adults, and that I encounter in
this world. It's certainly more edifying and harper. My youngest
still requires a car seat, and I don't know if
it's that she can't buckle it herself, or if she
wants me to do it for her, because she'll always say, Papa,
(01:31):
I can't get this buckled, so of course I have to.
You know, she's done it before, but I have to
go back and check. I get out of the car,
and then she smiles at me as I'm buckling this
thing up. Of course, I can't resist kissing her forehead
when I do it. But think about the reptilian like
(01:53):
nature that one must possess to abandon your precious little
angel strapped in a car seat. As a car begins
to fill with water, you exit out of the vehicle,
(02:17):
swim ashore, and ambulate on over to a house immediately
adjacent to the canal where you've abandoned your child. That's
what we're going to be talking about today. I want
to tell you the story of a little girl named Reagan.
(02:39):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs, Dave.
I guess with your grandson now, he's past the age
of having to requiring a car seat or even a
booster seat.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Probably my oldest one is is now older and bigger,
and and that's a fairly new thing, you know, because
you go from the seat to the booster and then
on that. But the other one's my goodin is Lily
and Mazie are still in car seats, and so is
Liam for that matter. They're all, oh my, I know, okay,
(03:16):
but Braylyn is the one that has got he's the
oldest one, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
He's graduated. Yeah, and there's a certain amount of pride.
It's almost like they're going to another grade. There's a
certain amount of pride. I remember when Noah was little
and he made it up to like, I don't know,
it was like five or six or whatever it was,
and Noah I took a car seat out, you know,
and the booster actually, and he was like, I mean
(03:43):
I get to ride in the seat. I was like, yeah, buddy,
you're riding in the seat, and so uh, you know,
and he kind of puffed his chest out and was
proud of himself at that point. And it is kind
of a graduation, Dave. And you know, we spend so
much time trying to take care of these precious angels
(04:03):
just to get them first off, in the first part
of their life, just to viability, and then you try
to again enhance their resiliency physically and mentally in every
other way. But I'm I'm always astounded at people that
discard children. And that's the way I regard it. And
(04:25):
we've actually covered several of these cases where you know,
children are just you know, they're they're treated like rubbish
and people just walk away. I guess they just you know,
feel like that, Well, if I have need of one
in the future, I'll just create another one.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Believable, you know. That reminds me of dying downs remember
her uh, you know, and that whole the idea that
having another child would replace the one you killed, you know,
because their death. In this case, we're dealing with Reagan Heron,
who's just a little thing. She's four years old, beautiful,
just as cute as a button, a squirrel, and she
(05:06):
has that as people explain, she's just got that effervescent
personality and just just a child that everybody loves. Her mother,
Juliet Acosta, is twenty six. Now at four years old,
you've had a child long enough to you've gone through
the baby stuff, even if you're a young parent, and
she was Juliet A Costa having a child at what
twenty one, twenty two. By twenty six, you've bonded with
(05:30):
the child, you know each other, and I would expect
nothing less than that child being the center of your universe.
You've had years now to get used to this, to
plan ahead so that you don't drive drunk with your
child in the car. That's part one. That you learn
(05:51):
certain things, even if you're an idiot when you're younger,
after you've been a parent for a few years, you
learn and you grow, and if you don't, you end
up like Juliette Acosta allegedly is. She leaves a party
with her child in the back seat. They're driving home.
And I'm a little curious on some of the dynamics
(06:13):
here with the family, not in an accusatory way, merely
in a geographical location of family, because as Juliette Acosta
is driving home, her four year old daughter in the
back seat in her car seat. But there is a
time on the road when Juliet is not in total
(06:34):
control of the vehicle. She actually swerves off the left
hand shoulder and clips a telephone pole and then gets
back into the middle of the road, kind of pushed
back in and goes up an embankment and crashes into
a canal, a water canal, And it's loud enough to
(06:55):
be heard by people who live nearby. One of the
people who lives nearby this can and this car now
upside down in the canal is Acosta's uncle. And this uncle,
because of the noise, makes it to the scene, so
does another neighbor who actually has a car, actually has
(07:15):
the phone, you know, calling nine one one and everything.
When Acosta's uncle gets to the scene, he actually helps
get her out of the car, Juliete Acosta. And when
the neighbor shows up, she says she sees the two
of them standing on the vehicle in the water. They're
(07:37):
on top of it, and the neighbor says she hears
them saying there's a child, but she doesn't know if
the child is in the car. If the child is
in the water, she doesn't know. And it's eleven o'clock
at night, it's dark, and it's late, and people are already embedded.
This is a big shock to your system to figure
out what happened and what's going on, And that's what
(07:59):
the describes. So in this moment, we now know juliet
Acosta is out of the vehicle. She was the driver.
Her uncle is standing there with her on top of
the car, and the neighbor hears them say there's a child,
but she doesn't know exactly where. Now, what would you
expect to happen next, Joe Scott Morgan.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Well, I would expect that people would begin to dive
into the water and try to extricate this child, and
that you would you would do anything possible in order
to facilitate that and drag this child out by any
means possible. And you know you said a lot this
(08:41):
was eleven o'clock at mind, and so at eleven o'clock
at night. And I would submit to you, Dave, that
in this in this canal, even if it was eleven
o'clock in the morning, you probably couldn't see your hand
in front of your face and dove down pretty duringthing.
These are irrigation canals, which is for me, is fascinating
(09:04):
about this particular area. And I was looking at some
maps because I've never I've been, I've driven through, I
guess correct me, because I know you're a native Californian.
But on I five, which is the main you know,
North South roadway or interstate through California, you drive through
(09:27):
the San Joaquin Valley and you know it's renowned for
being like one of the most fertile places, fertile places
in the nation, or used to be, I would assume,
provided they can actually get water. And these canals were
designed many, many years ago in order to facilitate that.
(09:48):
And their concrete dave, which is fascinating to me because
it's not you know, I'm from South Louisiana and so
we have canals all over the place. But guess what, anyway,
they're not concrete. Matter of fact, they have to be
dredged ou out over time to keep them flowing. And
their mud mud based bottoms. You know, what I found
out was kind of interesting. You know what the primary
(10:10):
agricultural product is for this area, and it requires a
copious amount of water to grow almonds? Almonds?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah's got nuts.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, there you go. And when you take a look
at some of the Google views going up and down
the road, you can actually see in many spots you
see these almond groves that are you know, that are
lining the road. So this is part you know what
the point I'm making is, this is not New Territory.
(10:42):
She's actually from I think it's Richland or Oakland Oakdale,
not Oakland Oakdale, California. This is in.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Stanislaus. Yeah, Saslas County And just to hear you guys
an idea and I missed this. I should have done that,
I didn't. We're actually dealing with an area about twenty
miles outside of Modesto. It is to the west of
San Francisco of the Bay Area. Stanislaus County is a
big county, but again just giving you an idea of
(11:11):
where we are talking about, it's the biggest city nearby
is going to be San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Well, and you know this thing about it is when
this mother, you know, lights out from that party that night,
this is not new territory for her. No, this is
probably an area that she's driven through. She has an
awareness of the surroundings, you know that sort of thing.
(11:40):
And it's not like she's driving on a mountain side
you know that's wrapped around a mountain and you know
you get switched back turns and all that stuff. Day.
This thing is straight straight as an arrow. It's like
a long what do you call it? Straightaway? Essentially like
if you look at a race track or a drag race,
it's it's straight away. It's engineered to be that way.
(12:03):
How drunk, how inebriated, how absent or good judgment must
you be in order to make this sort of thing happen, Dave,
Because it's the houses are so close to the edge
of this thing. I understand why they heard this. First off,
she's driving what they are describing as an suv, which
(12:28):
is a Subaru suv, So we're not talking about some
big truck, but we're talking about a vehicle that's probably
all will drive all the time. She's familiar with the vehicle.
She's so familiar that she has a car seat in
the back seat that's strapped in there that belongs to Reagan.
So it's not like this is new equipment that she's
(12:49):
utilizing here. And that's just one of a myriad of
things that really gets my blood boiling on this case,
because there's no excuse. You can't say that it's mechanical error.
What it comes down to, if you really want to
look at it, this is pure unadulterated operator error with
(13:16):
alcohol added to the mix. So, Dave, juliet Acosta had
(13:38):
been consuming the firewater that night, or as my grandpa
used to like to say, she had been pulling a
cork and you know, had been imbibing. And I'll get
to it in a minute. We can talk about her
blood alcohol level, but can you kind of give us
the run up to what had been occurring that night. Now,
(14:02):
I don't know how much we have at this point
because this is a very fresh case.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Well you say very fresh case, and you're right, And
I need to go back and mention something, Joe, because
I think we've intimated a number of things that didn't
actually say that. Juliet Acosta has crashed her vehicle into
an irrigation canal. It's upside down in the water. She
gets out and she's seen with her uncle standing on
(14:31):
the undercarriage of the vehicle by a neighbor. No sign
of Reagan heron the four year old daughter, who is
still strapped in the vehicle. They don't know that, they
don't know where she is. So when nine one one
is called and deputies are dispatched very quickly, they arrive
on the scene and they can't find Rege Juliet Acosta,
(14:56):
and the deputy is told there's a four year old
girls where and so while mom isn't there, by the
time a deputy arrives, Joe, Juliet Acosta has left and
doesn't know her where her daughter is, does not know
where her four year old daughter is. Joe, and the
deputy arrives and immediately jumps in the water, and Juliet
(15:20):
Acosta is gone when he gets there. So keep that
in mind for just a minute. Here. Your child is
not with you and you leave. Who leaves? Who leaves
their four year old on the side of the canal
if it's eleven o'clock in the morning, not much less
(15:43):
eleven o'clock at night, Joe, who does that? Well, Juliet
Acosta did. She had been driving home from a party
earlier that evening. And we don't know as much about
this as we would like to know. And the reason
is very simple. Police are not telling us anything. We're
on a need to know basis. They have a case
(16:03):
of a four year old child who's dead, and they
have to take this to court and figure out how
they're going to get a conviction because we still don't
know where was Ray. We know she was coming home
from a party. But you know what, Joe, I only
found that in one article of all the different articles written,
(16:24):
of all the reports written, there's only one that actually
says that everybody that reported on it went with that
information that she was coming from a party. She's drinking.
She's not found at the scene by police. She's left.
Now we mentioned earlier it was her uncle that came
to the scene, so her uncle lives right there, I mean,
(16:48):
close enough to run to the accident.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
You mentioned how close the houses are to this irrigation canal,
and that's a big point because we don't know where
she was headed. You don't know where she was coming from.
We just know that at eleven o'clock at night, she's
drunkenly weaving down the road, hits a telephone pole, and
crashes into a canalopside down, and leaves her four year
old daughter and leaves the scene. That's what we know,
(17:16):
and then the deputy arrives.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I was given some thought to this because anytime you
have a vehicle related event, and I don't care if
it's happening on an interstate highway or back road or
I've worked my sheriff cases, particularly early in my career.
There's not a lot of water in Atlanta. He got
the Chattoocho River, but other than that, there's not a lot.
But in South Louisiana, I can almost guarantee water is
(17:42):
going to play into several desks at least a couple
of couple of times a month at the corner's office,
and so I worked my share of those over the years.
And one of the things that you want to think
about with a vehicle is a structural intent. And I
found it fascinating. First off, the distance from what I'm
(18:04):
understanding from the driveway to where the car wound up
is about nine hundred feet. It's not like this huge
number that we're talking about. It's not like she pulled
out of the driveway and floored it and went down
a mile. I mean, we're talking really close. And the
sound this reverberation that took place. She did strike this
(18:28):
utility pole and kind of glanced or bounced off of it,
and then that you know, cast her over the side
of this it's a concrete trench, is essentially what occurred.
So one of the things I was considering was if
she had not hit the pole and went into the water.
(18:50):
Cars can float, you know, to a certain degree. You
know they'll they'll have a bit of buoyancy. If the
windows are up, in particular, you've got an air bubble
for a time that's in there. But once you breach
the structure of the vehicle, and maybe this happen because
we're still not sure where this strike took place on
(19:12):
the pole, and that's something that probably CHP will be
taking a look at because they've got fantastic accident reconstructionists
with that organization. They're going to look at the structure
of this car because you know, as you mentioned, I
don't want to gloss over this. We're talking about a
(19:34):
mother who rightly so has been charged not with vehicular day,
but with murder. With murder. That's where the DA's mind
is with this. Okay, So they're going to cover every
jot and tittle along the way with this. So you've
got a car that glances off the pole and then
it inverts into the water. Now that in and of
(19:58):
itself is very disorientating. Okay. Any kind of air bubble
that may have been in there, may have may have
been compromised. But what do we know about people, and
this is just kind of me throwing this out there
to you. What do we know about people that are
(20:21):
drunk driving at night? What do they do with their windows?
Many times got to.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Give them down? See you stay awaken alert.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, and you want that wind blowing on your face.
And again, you know you can't convict her over roll
down windows. You know, anybody can say, well, I like
to I like rolling with my windows down, you know.
But if the windows were down all of a sudden,
when this car inverts, and when I'm saying invert, I'm
talking about this thing is on its roof in the water,
(20:51):
so everything is backwards. Okay, when you begin to think
about orientation, spatial orientation. If she's drunk, I don't know
how the heck she got out of the vehicle unless
she crawled out of the window. Was she even buckled herself?
Did her airbags deploy that sort of thing? Well, if
it was a soft landing in the water, they might
(21:14):
not have deployed. So she's not going to have the
sing in her face for that. It's not going to
stun her because many times airbags willing. And I'm sure
that we have friends out there that can attest to
the fact that being around an air bag deploying or
being on the receiving end of the scene is like
getting punched in the face. All right, It's not something
(21:35):
I mean people there have been people that have had
their glasses driven into their eyes by these things. Okay,
So it's like taking a punch to the face many times.
It's disorienting. So we don't know have that data, but
I do know this. As the car is inverting, you're
going to have this intrusion of water into this thing.
(21:57):
And here's the thing I couldn't figure out, Dave, I
think these canals are set up with locks, okay, and
so as I'm wondering how much current there is, if
it's twisting the vehicle around or if it's staying stable,
because I got to tell you, I was shocked the
other day. I started looking into this case and Dave,
(22:20):
on average, do you know how deep these things are?
They're thirty feet deep, man, thirty feet and so I'm
thinking at thirty feet man, that's three stories high. Is
this a space where it wasn't that deep? Maybe there's
kind of an undulation to it right there where the
(22:42):
car has come to rest, because if it's inverted and
you've got water intrusions, think's still floating above the surface.
I mean, what was it that you said the uncle
and somebody with a phone had already gotten on top
of the undercarriage of the vehicle right now.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
When the neighbor, okay, the car the vehicle upside down,
and when the neighbor arrives on the scene, she sees
the uncle and Acosta standing on top of the under carriage.
And that's the key here, because they couldn't. That's how
the neighbor was saying. She was really frustrated. She goes
she knew they were talking about there's a little girl missing.
Well is she in the car or is she in
(23:17):
the water? You know, That's what the neighbor was saying.
And the thing is is that juliet A Costa leaves
the scene before police arrive. When a deputy arrives, he
finds the uncle and the neighbor, and the uncle tells
the deputy there's a four year old girl missing. We
can't find her, and the deputy immediately Joe heroically jumps
(23:37):
into this canal water and gets under it and pulls
the little girl out. Reagan was in her car seat
in that vehicle. Now, we do not know exactly how
long yet. That will come out later on we'll be
able to determine at what point in time the deputy
arrived on scene. We know that he got out and
was performing CPR as he's pulling the little girl out
of the water. Okay, they get her onto an ambulance
(24:00):
and she is taken to the hospital. Reagan died at
the hospital the next day. Now back up here for
a minute. As I mentioned, when the deputy arrives juliet
A Costa, the mother is gone, meaning she crashes her
car into the canal. Her uncle helps her get out
of the car and she leaves the scene without knowing
(24:21):
where her daughter is. Is she in the car, is
she down the river? We don't know, and she's gone
nowhere to be found. Now, this is where the reporting
gets really screwy. This happened on March eighth, and the
reason it's a fresh story is there was a double
whammy of arrest. I'm going to speed up here. March eighth,
the accident happens. They find juliet A Costa. When they
(24:44):
go to a find out from her what happened. She's
taking a bath when deputies arrived. Now they go to
a residence. They won't tell us what residence, but knowing
that her uncle lives right there at the canal where
the accident happened, I'm not going to assume it was
his house. But I'm going to assume it was a
home that she knew people there, because Howard deputies at
(25:08):
you know, after eleven o'clock at night, know which house
to go to to find the woman. So they find
her in a residence. She's not at the car where
most of us would be diving back and forth trying
to find our child. We wouldn't leave our child. We
would be right there fighting for her life. But no,
Juliet Acosta is at taking a bath somewhere. Her lawyer
says she wasn't, but she was. Police had that in
(25:31):
their original report. When they found her. She's in a
residence taking a bath. They charged her with DUI shed
Her blood alcohol test comes back nearly three times legal drunk.
Point zero eight is legal drunk. So you're talking twenty
four now.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, point twenty four him.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
She's arrested and charged with DUI. She releases on bond
the next day. Now they're doing their investigation because Rachel,
her daughter, died, and as you just mentioned a minute ago,
that juliet A Costa has now been charged with murder. Now,
it took time between the time of the accident. In
(26:08):
the first week of March and till last Friday, when
you and I were in the Hamptons, she gets arrested.
Juliet A Costa does now. Her lawyer had made arrangements
with deputies in Stanislaus County to take her in and
have her booked on the extra charges that have now
been added to this crime. But she didn't show up.
(26:31):
According to the deputies and the prosecutor, that she was
trying to flee. They actually track her down to a
hotel in San Francisco and arrest her there with her dad.
Her dad is detained on they thought he was trying
to help her escape to flee justice, and that he
(26:51):
was detained. He was never charged, but he was detained
on that.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Now, well, you know, San Francisco does have an international airport,
a large one that I flown into several times, and
you know that would be my first thought, because I
got to tell you if this was my baby, and
I know it's not, but if it were mine, I'd
be in sackcloth and ashes. I would be I'm pulling
(27:18):
my hair out, crying out to anyone that would listen
to me. But you're telling me, or what the police
are saying is that when they found her. She's in
a hotel room in San Francisco. I hope the view
was really good, because I got to tell you, the
(27:40):
view that she potentially could have is not going to
be quite as picturesque. I'm looking at several images right
(28:01):
now as we chat, Dave, and I've got booking images
of Acosta. In addition to that, I've got an image
of Acosta with a group of other females I guess
(28:23):
friends or maybe family. And in this image, Reagan appears
to be, in my estimation at least, appears to be
maybe maybe too okay. And the reason I'm telling you
this is that in both images, the one where she's
(28:45):
in the group and she's smiling, holding this child on
her hit and just kind of let me describe this
to you, Reagan's absolutely beautiful. She's got her hair up
in little piggy tails. She's wearing kind of a purple
maroon cordullary jumper. She's got a little western vest on
as well, and Dave, she's wearing little purple cowboy boots
(29:07):
in this picture, and she looks now and I'm referring
to the mother Acosta like she probably weighs less now
than she did then. And just let me run down
some figures to you. Okay, if they're saying she's three
(29:29):
times three times a legal limit here, and legal limit,
as you had mentioned in Calli, is as it is
over most of the state, or most of the states,
it's point zero eight. Okay. With Reagan on board in
that car, she had three times a legal limit, which
(29:51):
would put her at point two four BAC. And to
kind of frame it in, let's just say that right now,
at this time in her life, Okay, she weighs maybe
one hundred and twenty pounds, and I'm talking about Acosta, Dave,
(30:13):
in order to get to the level that she's at
relative to how much alcohol she consumed. And of course
alcohols vary, Okay, so a beer is not going to
be the same as wine, just like wine is not
the same as whiskey. But on average, Dave, she will
have had to have consumed seven to eight alcoholic beverages
(30:36):
for them to have pulled a BAC of point two four.
And here's the thing. Remember what we said. She had
been taking a bath, all right, so she had had
time to maybe luxuriate, you know, in the bubbles there
in the warm bath and all the while, what's her
body doing. Well, her body is metabolized in the alcohol.
(30:58):
Now obviously not all of it's going to be gone.
I've had enough alcohol on board that I've gone to
bed at night and woke up and I was still drunk,
all right. And of course, hey, look, I'm chief from
our centers man and friends too. I mean, how many
of us have ever encountered a friend and they might
be clean and scrubbed and everything, and you see them
(31:20):
the next morning and they're smiling, they walk up to
you and they reek you know, you can just smell
it coming off of them. So that level of impairment,
that level of impairment. Day, she's not in the like
comatose range, don't misunderstand me, but her ability to navigate
(31:42):
the complexities of a two lane roadway at night in
a vehicle where she is this drunk's gonna be greatly compromised.
Like your motor responses are very very slow. That's you know,
we talked about one of the things that we see
with people that have imbibed and they rolled down their windows.
(32:04):
Another feature that comes along with this is the slow driver.
This is one of the things cops always look out
for slow drivers breaking center lane, wind does roll down
music all the way up. The one I like is
the windows all the way down and the air conditioning
all the way up at the same time. That's a classic.
(32:24):
And so you've got all of these little features that
cops will look for. Well, she wasn't there when they
rolled up. But who was there? Well, Reagan was there, Dave,
inverted strapped in a car seat. Now, how many of
(32:46):
us have seen some movie where a car goes off
off of a ledge and winds up in a body
of water. One of the things that I'm thinking of
James Bond movie here or something like that. There's always
that And I can't, by the way, I can't watch
submarine movies. They unnerve me. I hate the thought of
that Clausterphobi. Hats off to anybody in the sub service
(33:09):
that has served our country. I don't see how you
do it. The idea when a sub or something begins
to fill up, where they look for, Well, they look
for that air bubble that's at the top, Dave, That's
that's not what Reagan would have been experiencing. What's water
going to do? Well? If those windows are open, the
(33:30):
windows are open, the water is going to see the
lowest point of gravity. I mean, just go in the bathroom,
take a cup, fill it up. The water doesn't go
to the rim. When you fill it up, begin filling
it up, it goes to the bottom. Well, Reagan is
at the bottom, okay, because the car is inverted, water
is filling the cabin of the car. Now, at best,
(33:54):
in my estimation, our little feet dangling off the edge
of the car seat which she strapped into may have
been dry for a little while. But the car begins
to fill up slowly. So what's this the equivalent of Well,
just imagine this. You're laying on your back on a
(34:16):
table and someone takes a pitcher of water. Now you
can't hold your head up, which Reagan could not have
because she's strapped in the car seat. It would be
like someone taking a gallon jug of water and pouring
it directly into your nostrils. And you're taking this on board.
(34:40):
You have no choice. She's four years old. She doesn't
know to hold her breath. You see where this is going.
She doesn't know to hold her breath, so she is
literally taking this water into her lungs. She's taking this
water into her stomach. Now here's something key that goes
(35:04):
to timeline. It is said that she was not declared
dead until the next morning. I'm surprised by that. I'm
surprised that she had some sign of life. I don't
know if it was some kind of like what they
(35:26):
refer to as an agonal respiration, faint heartbeat, whatever the
case might be. But one of the things that you
have to overcome in a circumstance like this is that
her sinuses would have been filled with water. And just
because she expirates the water, which means blowing out, doesn't
(35:47):
mean that everything's going to come in. And here's another thing.
This precious little baby is taking on gulps of water
and this is also going down her airway through her trachea,
taking on water into her lungs. Literally, Now a little
kid that is this age their lungs, I think probably
(36:10):
for there's not a lot of difference between little boys
and little girls at four relative Antomically, I'm talking about
organs here. I'm not talking about any other features. What
I'm talking about is how environmental environmental impacts the environment
that they're in. It's quite plausible that her little lungs
(36:32):
in life probably should have weighed I don't know, probably
seventy to eighty grams each. The lighter lung is always
going to be the left lung because it only has
two lobes, you know, the heart overlays kind of overlays
are is positioned adjacent to the left lung. So left
(36:54):
lung's only got two lobes. Right lung's got three lobes.
And so she's, you know, taking in this water and
there's no way to blow it out because you're blowing
back out into an aquatic environment. So she's taking this
on and I don't really know if she's strapped into
the car seat, how well was she strapped into the
(37:15):
car seat, Did she sustain any other kind of injuries
in this environment. We do know that she had to
be freed from this thing in order to facilitate her extrication.
So when they got her out, it's my understanding that
they immediately began to do CPR, and God blessed these
(37:36):
people for doing this. They're going to be pushing a
lot of water out of her, more than likely, but
you're not going to be able to get all of
that water out of her lungs, there will be some
remnant and lungs can become also hemorrhagic as a result
of being in water like this, so you'll get these
focal areas of hemorrhage and the lungs as well. Lungs
(37:59):
are really delicate, distraining and it wouldn't surprise me to
see perhaps some hemor hemorrhagic changes in her airway as well. Dave,
and any kind of foreign objects that are floating out there.
We're talking about we're talking about an agricultural canal, So
what's running off, Well, if you just look at a
(38:21):
molecular level, you might have any number of types of pesticides,
those sorts of things. If that got into her system,
that did that impact her viability for life? Is she
taking on mud that may have gathered at the bottom
of this canal? Is it free floating in there? There
are runoff that contains say, like leaves, clippings, anything like
(38:43):
that that's coming off of these trees and any associated grass.
This is a very complex event that has occurred in
the fact that she actually survived until the next morning.
To me, I don't want to use the term miracle here,
but it's fascinating It's really intriguing because we have an
(39:05):
understanding that she had life in her day. And here's
the thing that will really put you in a twist here. Now,
assuming that this child was not a neeebre headed like
her mother, she would have had an environmental understanding, that
(39:25):
is her surroundings. Can you imagine being bundled up by
mommy Mobby's been imbibing. She takes you out to the
car and you're strapped in the seat. This is something
that has been done hundreds of times before. We know.
We get in mommy's car and we're going back to
(39:48):
our house. I'm going back to my bed with my toys. Okay,
but that's not what happened that night, Dave. My supposition
is that she was awaken alert. Perhaps maybe she drifted off,
but I can tell you when she woke up. She
woke up when that car impacted that pole, if she
(40:08):
was asleep prior to that. I mean, how many times
have you and I put our babies and our grand
babies in a car when they're sleep, you know, you
kind of waken, you know, take them out, and then
we'll take them out and you know, try to keep
as quiet as possible. She woke up with that initial impact.
And I think that everybody can identify with this. Have
you ever had that moment where maybe a deer jumped
(40:31):
out in front of you, or you hit something, and
all of a sudden, your breathing changes, doesn't it You
have hyper awareness, you're shallow breathing, you know, like this,
When she hit that pole, she would have had an awareness,
Her senses would have been initiated to the point where
(40:54):
she's hyper vigilant. Now, maybe Mommy screamed at that moment
and she's hit the pole. This child is in the backseat,
strapped in. She can't go anywhere, she can't move her
arms other than in that seat. She can't kick her
little legs to get away because she's strapped down. And
(41:18):
to make matters worse, now you're flying through the air.
My goodness, what's happening. We're not going home. Maybe you
hit the side of this embankment. There's a large thud,
Maybe the car twist almost barrel rolls in the air
(41:40):
because of this odd position that the car is in
this attitude, the car inverts, lands in the water, and
the next thing you know, you're screaming out. Like any
four year old, Mommy, Mommy, mommy, But Mommy's not there.
(42:06):
The next thing you know, your face is wet. It's
going up to your chin. Now you're wasted, and you
can no longer breathe because there's no air to breathe.
It's been replaced by water. My friends, as we learn
more about this case, we're going to explore it more deeply.
(42:28):
I want to be able to tell Reagan's story in full.
I want to know what actually happened to her that night.
We'll be following as we go along. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Body Backs
Quality dators, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know if
it's the way my hands are engineered, or whatever the
case might be. Maybe some of you guys have the
same problem, and it's not something that has corrected itself.
(00:22):
Even when my kids were little and I started trying
to figure out how to use a car seat with them,
it always end in frustration. And you want to be
safe with your children, you know. I remember when my
first child came home from the hospital, I was terrified
(00:43):
I was going to break something, And so that kind
of continues on for a while, you know, And when
you put them in that car seat and you're conveying
them home. First off, it's the most precious thing in
the world, but you're always concerned about safety, and that
continues on for me today. You know. I talk about
my grandbabies, whom I love dearly. I'd rather spend time
(01:09):
with them than mostly adults, and that I encounter in
this world. It's certainly more edifying and harper. My youngest
still requires a car seat, and I don't know if
it's that she can't buckle it herself, or if she
wants me to do it for her, because she'll always say, Papa,
(01:31):
I can't get this buckled, so of course I have to.
You know, she's done it before, but I have to
go back and check. I get out of the car,
and then she smiles at me as I'm buckling this
thing up. Of course, I can't resist kissing her forehead
when I do it. But think about the reptilian like
(01:53):
nature that one must possess to abandon your precious little
angel strapped in a car seat. As a car begins
to fill with water, you exit out of the vehicle,
(02:17):
swim ashore, and ambulate on over to a house immediately
adjacent to the canal where you've abandoned your child. That's
what we're going to be talking about today. I want
to tell you the story of a little girl named Reagan.
(02:39):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs, Dave.
I guess with your grandson now, he's past the age
of having to requiring a car seat or even a
booster seat.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Probably my oldest one is is now older and bigger,
and and that's a fairly new thing, you know, because
you go from the seat to the booster and then
on that. But the other one's my goodin is Lily
and Mazie are still in car seats, and so is
Liam for that matter. They're all, oh my, I know, okay,
(03:16):
but Braylyn is the one that has got he's the
oldest one, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
He's graduated. Yeah, and there's a certain amount of pride.
It's almost like they're going to another grade. There's a
certain amount of pride. I remember when Noah was little
and he made it up to like, I don't know,
it was like five or six or whatever it was,
and Noah I took a car seat out, you know,
and the booster actually, and he was like, I mean
(03:43):
I get to ride in the seat. I was like, yeah, buddy,
you're riding in the seat, and so uh, you know,
and he kind of puffed his chest out and was
proud of himself at that point. And it is kind
of a graduation, Dave. And you know, we spend so
much time trying to take care of these precious angels
(04:03):
just to get them first off, in the first part
of their life, just to viability, and then you try
to again enhance their resiliency physically and mentally in every
other way. But I'm I'm always astounded at people that
discard children. And that's the way I regard it. And
(04:25):
we've actually covered several of these cases where you know,
children are just you know, they're they're treated like rubbish
and people just walk away. I guess they just you know,
feel like that, Well, if I have need of one
in the future, I'll just create another one.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Believable, you know. That reminds me of dying downs remember
her uh, you know, and that whole the idea that
having another child would replace the one you killed, you know,
because their death. In this case, we're dealing with Reagan Heron,
who's just a little thing. She's four years old, beautiful,
just as cute as a button, a squirrel, and she
(05:06):
has that as people explain, she's just got that effervescent
personality and just just a child that everybody loves. Her mother,
Juliet Acosta, is twenty six. Now at four years old,
you've had a child long enough to you've gone through
the baby stuff, even if you're a young parent, and
she was Juliet A Costa having a child at what
twenty one, twenty two. By twenty six, you've bonded with
(05:30):
the child, you know each other, and I would expect
nothing less than that child being the center of your universe.
You've had years now to get used to this, to
plan ahead so that you don't drive drunk with your
child in the car. That's part one. That you learn
(05:51):
certain things, even if you're an idiot when you're younger,
after you've been a parent for a few years, you
learn and you grow, and if you don't, you end
up like Juliette Acosta allegedly is. She leaves a party
with her child in the back seat. They're driving home.
And I'm a little curious on some of the dynamics
(06:13):
here with the family, not in an accusatory way, merely
in a geographical location of family, because as Juliette Acosta
is driving home, her four year old daughter in the
back seat in her car seat. But there is a
time on the road when Juliet is not in total
(06:34):
control of the vehicle. She actually swerves off the left
hand shoulder and clips a telephone pole and then gets
back into the middle of the road, kind of pushed
back in and goes up an embankment and crashes into
a canal, a water canal, And it's loud enough to
(06:55):
be heard by people who live nearby. One of the
people who lives nearby this can and this car now
upside down in the canal is Acosta's uncle. And this uncle,
because of the noise, makes it to the scene, so
does another neighbor who actually has a car, actually has
(07:15):
the phone, you know, calling nine one one and everything.
When Acosta's uncle gets to the scene, he actually helps
get her out of the car, Juliete Acosta. And when
the neighbor shows up, she says she sees the two
of them standing on the vehicle in the water. They're
(07:37):
on top of it, and the neighbor says she hears
them saying there's a child, but she doesn't know if
the child is in the car. If the child is
in the water, she doesn't know. And it's eleven o'clock
at night, it's dark, and it's late, and people are already embedded.
This is a big shock to your system to figure
out what happened and what's going on, And that's what
(07:59):
the describes. So in this moment, we now know juliet
Acosta is out of the vehicle. She was the driver.
Her uncle is standing there with her on top of
the car, and the neighbor hears them say there's a child,
but she doesn't know exactly where. Now, what would you
expect to happen next, Joe Scott Morgan.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Well, I would expect that people would begin to dive
into the water and try to extricate this child, and
that you would you would do anything possible in order
to facilitate that and drag this child out by any
means possible. And you know you said a lot this
(08:41):
was eleven o'clock at mind, and so at eleven o'clock
at night. And I would submit to you, Dave, that
in this in this canal, even if it was eleven
o'clock in the morning, you probably couldn't see your hand
in front of your face and dove down pretty duringthing.
These are irrigation canals, which is for me, is fascinating
(09:04):
about this particular area. And I was looking at some
maps because I've never I've been, I've driven through, I
guess correct me, because I know you're a native Californian.
But on I five, which is the main you know,
North South roadway or interstate through California, you drive through
(09:27):
the San Joaquin Valley and you know it's renowned for
being like one of the most fertile places, fertile places
in the nation, or used to be, I would assume,
provided they can actually get water. And these canals were
designed many, many years ago in order to facilitate that.
(09:48):
And their concrete dave, which is fascinating to me because
it's not you know, I'm from South Louisiana and so
we have canals all over the place. But guess what, anyway,
they're not concrete. Matter of fact, they have to be
dredged ou out over time to keep them flowing. And
their mud mud based bottoms. You know, what I found
out was kind of interesting. You know what the primary
(10:10):
agricultural product is for this area, and it requires a
copious amount of water to grow almonds? Almonds?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah's got nuts.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, there you go. And when you take a look
at some of the Google views going up and down
the road, you can actually see in many spots you
see these almond groves that are you know, that are
lining the road. So this is part you know what
the point I'm making is, this is not New Territory.
(10:42):
She's actually from I think it's Richland or Oakland Oakdale,
not Oakland Oakdale, California. This is in.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Stanislaus. Yeah, Saslas County And just to hear you guys
an idea and I missed this. I should have done that,
I didn't. We're actually dealing with an area about twenty
miles outside of Modesto. It is to the west of
San Francisco of the Bay Area. Stanislaus County is a
big county, but again just giving you an idea of
(11:11):
where we are talking about, it's the biggest city nearby
is going to be San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Well, and you know this thing about it is when
this mother, you know, lights out from that party that night,
this is not new territory for her. No, this is
probably an area that she's driven through. She has an
awareness of the surroundings, you know that sort of thing.
(11:40):
And it's not like she's driving on a mountain side
you know that's wrapped around a mountain and you know
you get switched back turns and all that stuff. Day.
This thing is straight straight as an arrow. It's like
a long what do you call it? Straightaway? Essentially like
if you look at a race track or a drag race,
it's it's straight away. It's engineered to be that way.
(12:03):
How drunk, how inebriated, how absent or good judgment must
you be in order to make this sort of thing happen, Dave,
Because it's the houses are so close to the edge
of this thing. I understand why they heard this. First off,
she's driving what they are describing as an suv, which
(12:28):
is a Subaru suv, So we're not talking about some
big truck, but we're talking about a vehicle that's probably
all will drive all the time. She's familiar with the vehicle.
She's so familiar that she has a car seat in
the back seat that's strapped in there that belongs to Reagan.
So it's not like this is new equipment that she's
(12:49):
utilizing here. And that's just one of a myriad of
things that really gets my blood boiling on this case,
because there's no excuse. You can't say that it's mechanical error.
What it comes down to, if you really want to
look at it, this is pure unadulterated operator error with
(13:16):
alcohol added to the mix. So, Dave, juliet Acosta had
(13:38):
been consuming the firewater that night, or as my grandpa
used to like to say, she had been pulling a
cork and you know, had been imbibing. And I'll get
to it in a minute. We can talk about her
blood alcohol level, but can you kind of give us
the run up to what had been occurring that night. Now,
(14:02):
I don't know how much we have at this point
because this is a very fresh case.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Well you say very fresh case, and you're right, And
I need to go back and mention something, Joe, because
I think we've intimated a number of things that didn't
actually say that. Juliet Acosta has crashed her vehicle into
an irrigation canal. It's upside down in the water. She
gets out and she's seen with her uncle standing on
(14:31):
the undercarriage of the vehicle by a neighbor. No sign
of Reagan heron the four year old daughter, who is
still strapped in the vehicle. They don't know that, they
don't know where she is. So when nine one one
is called and deputies are dispatched very quickly, they arrive
on the scene and they can't find Rege Juliet Acosta,
(14:56):
and the deputy is told there's a four year old
girls where and so while mom isn't there, by the
time a deputy arrives, Joe, Juliet Acosta has left and
doesn't know her where her daughter is, does not know
where her four year old daughter is. Joe, and the
deputy arrives and immediately jumps in the water, and Juliet
(15:20):
Acosta is gone when he gets there. So keep that
in mind for just a minute. Here. Your child is
not with you and you leave. Who leaves? Who leaves
their four year old on the side of the canal
if it's eleven o'clock in the morning, not much less
(15:43):
eleven o'clock at night, Joe, who does that? Well, Juliet
Acosta did. She had been driving home from a party
earlier that evening. And we don't know as much about
this as we would like to know. And the reason
is very simple. Police are not telling us anything. We're
on a need to know basis. They have a case
(16:03):
of a four year old child who's dead, and they
have to take this to court and figure out how
they're going to get a conviction because we still don't
know where was Ray. We know she was coming home
from a party. But you know what, Joe, I only
found that in one article of all the different articles written,
(16:24):
of all the reports written, there's only one that actually
says that everybody that reported on it went with that
information that she was coming from a party. She's drinking.
She's not found at the scene by police. She's left.
Now we mentioned earlier it was her uncle that came
to the scene, so her uncle lives right there, I mean,
(16:48):
close enough to run to the accident.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
You mentioned how close the houses are to this irrigation canal,
and that's a big point because we don't know where
she was headed. You don't know where she was coming from.
We just know that at eleven o'clock at night, she's
drunkenly weaving down the road, hits a telephone pole, and
crashes into a canalopside down, and leaves her four year
old daughter and leaves the scene. That's what we know,
(17:16):
and then the deputy arrives.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I was given some thought to this because anytime you
have a vehicle related event, and I don't care if
it's happening on an interstate highway or back road or
I've worked my sheriff cases, particularly early in my career.
There's not a lot of water in Atlanta. He got
the Chattoocho River, but other than that, there's not a lot.
But in South Louisiana, I can almost guarantee water is
(17:42):
going to play into several desks at least a couple
of couple of times a month at the corner's office,
and so I worked my share of those over the years.
And one of the things that you want to think
about with a vehicle is a structural intent. And I
found it fascinating. First off, the distance from what I'm
(18:04):
understanding from the driveway to where the car wound up
is about nine hundred feet. It's not like this huge
number that we're talking about. It's not like she pulled
out of the driveway and floored it and went down
a mile. I mean, we're talking really close. And the
sound this reverberation that took place. She did strike this
(18:28):
utility pole and kind of glanced or bounced off of it,
and then that you know, cast her over the side
of this it's a concrete trench, is essentially what occurred.
So one of the things I was considering was if
she had not hit the pole and went into the water.
(18:50):
Cars can float, you know, to a certain degree. You
know they'll they'll have a bit of buoyancy. If the
windows are up, in particular, you've got an air bubble
for a time that's in there. But once you breach
the structure of the vehicle, and maybe this happen because
we're still not sure where this strike took place on
(19:12):
the pole, and that's something that probably CHP will be
taking a look at because they've got fantastic accident reconstructionists
with that organization. They're going to look at the structure
of this car because you know, as you mentioned, I
don't want to gloss over this. We're talking about a
(19:34):
mother who rightly so has been charged not with vehicular day,
but with murder. With murder. That's where the DA's mind
is with this. Okay, So they're going to cover every
jot and tittle along the way with this. So you've
got a car that glances off the pole and then
it inverts into the water. Now that in and of
(19:58):
itself is very disorientating. Okay. Any kind of air bubble
that may have been in there, may have may have
been compromised. But what do we know about people, and
this is just kind of me throwing this out there
to you. What do we know about people that are
(20:21):
drunk driving at night? What do they do with their windows?
Many times got to.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Give them down? See you stay awaken alert.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, and you want that wind blowing on your face.
And again, you know you can't convict her over roll
down windows. You know, anybody can say, well, I like
to I like rolling with my windows down, you know.
But if the windows were down all of a sudden,
when this car inverts, and when I'm saying invert, I'm
talking about this thing is on its roof in the water,
(20:51):
so everything is backwards. Okay, when you begin to think
about orientation, spatial orientation. If she's drunk, I don't know
how the heck she got out of the vehicle unless
she crawled out of the window. Was she even buckled herself?
Did her airbags deploy that sort of thing? Well, if
it was a soft landing in the water, they might
(21:14):
not have deployed. So she's not going to have the
sing in her face for that. It's not going to
stun her because many times airbags willing. And I'm sure
that we have friends out there that can attest to
the fact that being around an air bag deploying or
being on the receiving end of the scene is like
getting punched in the face. All right, It's not something
(21:35):
I mean people there have been people that have had
their glasses driven into their eyes by these things. Okay,
So it's like taking a punch to the face many times.
It's disorienting. So we don't know have that data, but
I do know this. As the car is inverting, you're
going to have this intrusion of water into this thing.
(21:57):
And here's the thing I couldn't figure out, Dave, I
think these canals are set up with locks, okay, and
so as I'm wondering how much current there is, if
it's twisting the vehicle around or if it's staying stable,
because I got to tell you, I was shocked the
other day. I started looking into this case and Dave,
(22:20):
on average, do you know how deep these things are?
They're thirty feet deep, man, thirty feet and so I'm
thinking at thirty feet man, that's three stories high. Is
this a space where it wasn't that deep? Maybe there's
kind of an undulation to it right there where the
(22:42):
car has come to rest, because if it's inverted and
you've got water intrusions, think's still floating above the surface.
I mean, what was it that you said the uncle
and somebody with a phone had already gotten on top
of the undercarriage of the vehicle right now.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
When the neighbor, okay, the car the vehicle upside down,
and when the neighbor arrives on the scene, she sees
the uncle and Acosta standing on top of the under carriage.
And that's the key here, because they couldn't. That's how
the neighbor was saying. She was really frustrated. She goes
she knew they were talking about there's a little girl missing.
Well is she in the car or is she in
(23:17):
the water? You know, That's what the neighbor was saying.
And the thing is is that juliet A Costa leaves
the scene before police arrive. When a deputy arrives, he
finds the uncle and the neighbor, and the uncle tells
the deputy there's a four year old girl missing. We
can't find her, and the deputy immediately Joe heroically jumps
(23:37):
into this canal water and gets under it and pulls
the little girl out. Reagan was in her car seat
in that vehicle. Now, we do not know exactly how
long yet. That will come out later on we'll be
able to determine at what point in time the deputy
arrived on scene. We know that he got out and
was performing CPR as he's pulling the little girl out
of the water. Okay, they get her onto an ambulance
(24:00):
and she is taken to the hospital. Reagan died at
the hospital the next day. Now back up here for
a minute. As I mentioned, when the deputy arrives juliet
A Costa, the mother is gone, meaning she crashes her
car into the canal. Her uncle helps her get out
of the car and she leaves the scene without knowing
(24:21):
where her daughter is. Is she in the car, is
she down the river? We don't know, and she's gone
nowhere to be found. Now, this is where the reporting
gets really screwy. This happened on March eighth, and the
reason it's a fresh story is there was a double
whammy of arrest. I'm going to speed up here. March eighth,
the accident happens. They find juliet A Costa. When they
(24:44):
go to a find out from her what happened. She's
taking a bath when deputies arrived. Now they go to
a residence. They won't tell us what residence, but knowing
that her uncle lives right there at the canal where
the accident happened, I'm not going to assume it was
his house. But I'm going to assume it was a
home that she knew people there, because Howard deputies at
(25:08):
you know, after eleven o'clock at night, know which house
to go to to find the woman. So they find
her in a residence. She's not at the car where
most of us would be diving back and forth trying
to find our child. We wouldn't leave our child. We
would be right there fighting for her life. But no,
Juliet Acosta is at taking a bath somewhere. Her lawyer
says she wasn't, but she was. Police had that in
(25:31):
their original report. When they found her. She's in a
residence taking a bath. They charged her with DUI shed
Her blood alcohol test comes back nearly three times legal drunk.
Point zero eight is legal drunk. So you're talking twenty
four now.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, point twenty four him.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
She's arrested and charged with DUI. She releases on bond
the next day. Now they're doing their investigation because Rachel,
her daughter, died, and as you just mentioned a minute ago,
that juliet A Costa has now been charged with murder. Now,
it took time between the time of the accident. In
(26:08):
the first week of March and till last Friday, when
you and I were in the Hamptons, she gets arrested.
Juliet A Costa does now. Her lawyer had made arrangements
with deputies in Stanislaus County to take her in and
have her booked on the extra charges that have now
been added to this crime. But she didn't show up.
(26:31):
According to the deputies and the prosecutor, that she was
trying to flee. They actually track her down to a
hotel in San Francisco and arrest her there with her dad.
Her dad is detained on they thought he was trying
to help her escape to flee justice, and that he
(26:51):
was detained. He was never charged, but he was detained
on that.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Now, well, you know, San Francisco does have an international airport,
a large one that I flown into several times, and
you know that would be my first thought, because I
got to tell you if this was my baby, and
I know it's not, but if it were mine, I'd
be in sackcloth and ashes. I would be I'm pulling
(27:18):
my hair out, crying out to anyone that would listen
to me. But you're telling me, or what the police
are saying is that when they found her. She's in
a hotel room in San Francisco. I hope the view
was really good, because I got to tell you, the
(27:40):
view that she potentially could have is not going to
be quite as picturesque. I'm looking at several images right
(28:01):
now as we chat, Dave, and I've got booking images
of Acosta. In addition to that, I've got an image
of Acosta with a group of other females I guess
(28:23):
friends or maybe family. And in this image, Reagan appears
to be, in my estimation at least, appears to be
maybe maybe too okay. And the reason I'm telling you
this is that in both images, the one where she's
(28:45):
in the group and she's smiling, holding this child on
her hit and just kind of let me describe this
to you, Reagan's absolutely beautiful. She's got her hair up
in little piggy tails. She's wearing kind of a purple
maroon cordullary jumper. She's got a little western vest on
as well, and Dave, she's wearing little purple cowboy boots
(29:07):
in this picture, and she looks now and I'm referring
to the mother Acosta like she probably weighs less now
than she did then. And just let me run down
some figures to you. Okay, if they're saying she's three
(29:29):
times three times a legal limit here, and legal limit,
as you had mentioned in Calli, is as it is
over most of the state, or most of the states,
it's point zero eight. Okay. With Reagan on board in
that car, she had three times a legal limit, which
(29:51):
would put her at point two four BAC. And to
kind of frame it in, let's just say that right now,
at this time in her life, Okay, she weighs maybe
one hundred and twenty pounds, and I'm talking about Acosta, Dave,
(30:13):
in order to get to the level that she's at
relative to how much alcohol she consumed. And of course
alcohols vary, Okay, so a beer is not going to
be the same as wine, just like wine is not
the same as whiskey. But on average, Dave, she will
have had to have consumed seven to eight alcoholic beverages
(30:36):
for them to have pulled a BAC of point two four.
And here's the thing. Remember what we said. She had
been taking a bath, all right, so she had had
time to maybe luxuriate, you know, in the bubbles there
in the warm bath and all the while, what's her
body doing. Well, her body is metabolized in the alcohol.
(30:58):
Now obviously not all of it's going to be gone.
I've had enough alcohol on board that I've gone to
bed at night and woke up and I was still drunk,
all right. And of course, hey, look, I'm chief from
our centers man and friends too. I mean, how many
of us have ever encountered a friend and they might
be clean and scrubbed and everything, and you see them
(31:20):
the next morning and they're smiling, they walk up to
you and they reek you know, you can just smell
it coming off of them. So that level of impairment,
that level of impairment. Day, she's not in the like
comatose range, don't misunderstand me, but her ability to navigate
(31:42):
the complexities of a two lane roadway at night in
a vehicle where she is this drunk's gonna be greatly compromised.
Like your motor responses are very very slow. That's you know,
we talked about one of the things that we see
with people that have imbibed and they rolled down their windows.
(32:04):
Another feature that comes along with this is the slow driver.
This is one of the things cops always look out
for slow drivers breaking center lane, wind does roll down
music all the way up. The one I like is
the windows all the way down and the air conditioning
all the way up at the same time. That's a classic.
(32:24):
And so you've got all of these little features that
cops will look for. Well, she wasn't there when they
rolled up. But who was there? Well, Reagan was there, Dave,
inverted strapped in a car seat. Now, how many of
(32:46):
us have seen some movie where a car goes off
off of a ledge and winds up in a body
of water. One of the things that I'm thinking of
James Bond movie here or something like that. There's always
that And I can't, by the way, I can't watch
submarine movies. They unnerve me. I hate the thought of
that Clausterphobi. Hats off to anybody in the sub service
(33:09):
that has served our country. I don't see how you
do it. The idea when a sub or something begins
to fill up, where they look for, Well, they look
for that air bubble that's at the top, Dave, That's
that's not what Reagan would have been experiencing. What's water
going to do? Well? If those windows are open, the
(33:30):
windows are open, the water is going to see the
lowest point of gravity. I mean, just go in the bathroom,
take a cup, fill it up. The water doesn't go
to the rim. When you fill it up, begin filling
it up, it goes to the bottom. Well, Reagan is
at the bottom, okay, because the car is inverted, water
is filling the cabin of the car. Now, at best,
(33:54):
in my estimation, our little feet dangling off the edge
of the car seat which she strapped into may have
been dry for a little while. But the car begins
to fill up slowly. So what's this the equivalent of Well,
just imagine this. You're laying on your back on a
(34:16):
table and someone takes a pitcher of water. Now you
can't hold your head up, which Reagan could not have
because she's strapped in the car seat. It would be
like someone taking a gallon jug of water and pouring
it directly into your nostrils. And you're taking this on board.
(34:40):
You have no choice. She's four years old. She doesn't
know to hold her breath. You see where this is going.
She doesn't know to hold her breath, so she is
literally taking this water into her lungs. She's taking this
water into her stomach. Now here's something key that goes
(35:04):
to timeline. It is said that she was not declared
dead until the next morning. I'm surprised by that. I'm
surprised that she had some sign of life. I don't
know if it was some kind of like what they
(35:26):
refer to as an agonal respiration, faint heartbeat, whatever the
case might be. But one of the things that you
have to overcome in a circumstance like this is that
her sinuses would have been filled with water. And just
because she expirates the water, which means blowing out, doesn't
(35:47):
mean that everything's going to come in. And here's another thing.
This precious little baby is taking on gulps of water
and this is also going down her airway through her trachea,
taking on water into her lungs. Literally, Now a little
kid that is this age their lungs, I think probably
(36:10):
for there's not a lot of difference between little boys
and little girls at four relative Antomically, I'm talking about
organs here. I'm not talking about any other features. What
I'm talking about is how environmental environmental impacts the environment
that they're in. It's quite plausible that her little lungs
(36:32):
in life probably should have weighed I don't know, probably
seventy to eighty grams each. The lighter lung is always
going to be the left lung because it only has
two lobes, you know, the heart overlays kind of overlays
are is positioned adjacent to the left lung. So left
(36:54):
lung's only got two lobes. Right lung's got three lobes.
And so she's, you know, taking in this water and
there's no way to blow it out because you're blowing
back out into an aquatic environment. So she's taking this
on and I don't really know if she's strapped into
the car seat, how well was she strapped into the
(37:15):
car seat, Did she sustain any other kind of injuries
in this environment. We do know that she had to
be freed from this thing in order to facilitate her extrication.
So when they got her out, it's my understanding that
they immediately began to do CPR, and God blessed these
(37:36):
people for doing this. They're going to be pushing a
lot of water out of her, more than likely, but
you're not going to be able to get all of
that water out of her lungs, there will be some
remnant and lungs can become also hemorrhagic as a result
of being in water like this, so you'll get these
focal areas of hemorrhage and the lungs as well. Lungs
(37:59):
are really delicate, distraining and it wouldn't surprise me to
see perhaps some hemor hemorrhagic changes in her airway as well. Dave,
and any kind of foreign objects that are floating out there.
We're talking about we're talking about an agricultural canal, So
what's running off, Well, if you just look at a
(38:21):
molecular level, you might have any number of types of pesticides,
those sorts of things. If that got into her system,
that did that impact her viability for life? Is she
taking on mud that may have gathered at the bottom
of this canal? Is it free floating in there? There
are runoff that contains say, like leaves, clippings, anything like
(38:43):
that that's coming off of these trees and any associated grass.
This is a very complex event that has occurred in
the fact that she actually survived until the next morning.
To me, I don't want to use the term miracle here,
but it's fascinating It's really intriguing because we have an
(39:05):
understanding that she had life in her day. And here's
the thing that will really put you in a twist here. Now,
assuming that this child was not a neeebre headed like
her mother, she would have had an environmental understanding, that
(39:25):
is her surroundings. Can you imagine being bundled up by
mommy Mobby's been imbibing. She takes you out to the
car and you're strapped in the seat. This is something
that has been done hundreds of times before. We know.
We get in mommy's car and we're going back to
(39:48):
our house. I'm going back to my bed with my toys. Okay,
but that's not what happened that night, Dave. My supposition
is that she was awaken alert. Perhaps maybe she drifted off,
but I can tell you when she woke up. She
woke up when that car impacted that pole, if she
(40:08):
was asleep prior to that. I mean, how many times
have you and I put our babies and our grand
babies in a car when they're sleep, you know, you
kind of waken, you know, take them out, and then
we'll take them out and you know, try to keep
as quiet as possible. She woke up with that initial impact.
And I think that everybody can identify with this. Have
you ever had that moment where maybe a deer jumped
(40:31):
out in front of you, or you hit something, and
all of a sudden, your breathing changes, doesn't it You
have hyper awareness, you're shallow breathing, you know, like this,
When she hit that pole, she would have had an awareness,
Her senses would have been initiated to the point where
(40:54):
she's hyper vigilant. Now, maybe Mommy screamed at that moment
and she's hit the pole. This child is in the backseat,
strapped in. She can't go anywhere, she can't move her
arms other than in that seat. She can't kick her
little legs to get away because she's strapped down. And
(41:18):
to make matters worse, now you're flying through the air.
My goodness, what's happening. We're not going home. Maybe you
hit the side of this embankment. There's a large thud,
Maybe the car twist almost barrel rolls in the air
(41:40):
because of this odd position that the car is in
this attitude, the car inverts, lands in the water, and
the next thing you know, you're screaming out. Like any
four year old, Mommy, Mommy, mommy, But Mommy's not there.
(42:06):
The next thing you know, your face is wet. It's
going up to your chin. Now you're wasted, and you
can no longer breathe because there's no air to breathe.
It's been replaced by water. My friends, as we learn
more about this case, we're going to explore it more deeply.
(42:28):
I want to be able to tell Reagan's story in full.
I want to know what actually happened to her that night.
We'll be following as we go along. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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