Father of dead Long Beach child left in car speaks out

Ryan Hyer raised daughter Cheyenne for the first two years of her life while he and Cassie Barker, her mother, were together.

Hyer said he watched Cheyenne while Barker worked and attended the police academy. When Hyer and Cassie Barker broke up, Hyer went back to his home state of Florida.

"I went from being there continuously to not seeing her at all," he said.

Cheyenne, 3, was pronounced dead at a local hospital after being found unattended and unresponsive in a hot car belonging to her mother outside a home on Standard-Dedeaux Road in Kiln. The car was running, but police estimate she'd been there for hours.

As of Monday afternoon, no one has been criminally charged in the child's death.

Hyer said his world turned upside down when he heard his daughter was dead.

"What really kills me is that you see a child killed in a car wreck, or in a home invasion, or even left in a hot car," Hyer said. "And the last thing you ever expect is to have an officer come knock on your door and tell you your daughter has passed away."

UPDATE: Distraught mom's condition delays Long Beach child's burial

He said he couldn't process it right away.

"I lost all feeling. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe, then I was flat out crying. After that I just was angry, and I went in the backyard and started beating up the shed," he said.

Barker, a Long Beach police officer, has been placed on administrative leave along with patrolman Clark Ladner pending investigation of the child's death. Barker reportedly had been involved in a previous incident in which she had to deal with the Department of Human Services “so she could have her child back.” The details of that investigation have not been made public yet.

Hyer said he knew nothing about that incident, and he wants to know how police knew how to find him, but DHS didn't. He wonders if this could all have been avoided.

Cheyenne's name has been spelled "Cheyenn" in the media, but Hyer said he's spelled it with both e's since she was born. She loved horses, he said, and had curly gold hair and big blue eyes. They called her "Shy" for short, because when you spoke to her she'd shrug up her shoulders and squinch up her face and grin sheepishly. But she wasn't shy, Hyer said.

"She didn't shy away from anyone, she'd hug you no matter who you are," he said. "Everyone's got their own opinion about their child, but she was the funniest, happiest little girl ever."

Police Chief Wayne McDowell did not return multiple calls from The Clarion-Ledger to his office and his cellphone, but he told The Sun Herald's Robin Fitzgerald that he is "looking into an internal matter with his officers." He said he has spoken with Ladner but has not been able to speak with Barker yet. She has been described as being in shock.

Hancock County Chief Deputy Don Bass said authorities believe Cheyenne had been in the car for up to four hours while Barker was inside the other officer's home. Bass described Ladner as "a friend of hers," and said at this point it's not clear what their relationship was. Barker and Ladner were off duty at the time of the incident.

"I'm not tiptoeing around it, but we just started the interviews this morning, and I'm not aware of what his interview has consisted of as far as that question," Bass said. "She was there visiting him. I can't speculate on anything more."

Hyer alleges that he and Barker broke up over issues concerning her seeing other men. He said he does know Ladner from the time he lived in Mississippi with Barker.

Barker was officially hired in September 2014. The minutes of a May 5, 2015, board of aldermen meeting shows Barker with a one-week suspension without pay and a 90-day extension of probation. It's not clear what for.

Ladner has been put on leave by Long Beach Police Department, but Bass said at this point there's nothing to lead investigators to believe he had any involvement in the situation.

"We don't even know if he knew the child was in the car," Bass said.

BACK STORY: 2 on leave after coast officer's toddler dies in car

Bass said the air conditioner was on when responders got to the home. He said that in spite of the fact that police often leave their cars running with the air conditioners on while unattended, that there's "no excuse for leaving your child in the car."

"There's no logical reason to do that," he said. "It's not an accident. She left the child in the car. We hear and read about this, it seems like quite often recently. It seems more than ever that people are leaving their infants and small children in the car to do tasks and shopping."

At this point it's unclear if there will be charges, but if there are, Bass said he expects Barker would be charged with negligent homicide.

"I just left the local funeral home trying to make arrangements," Hyer said. "When it came time to pick out a casket, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it."

Contact Therese Apel at tapel@gannett.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.