PONTIAC (WWJ) – An Oakland County Sheriff's deputy is under investigation for his work related to the search for a family, including a mother and two boys who were found frozen to death.
Sheriff Mike Bouchard said Wednesday he is reviewing all contact deputies had with Monica Cannady and her family prior to Sunday afternoon, when the bodies of the 35-year old and her two sons were found in a Pontiac field.
The deputy was asked to check out an area where the family was spotted last Friday afternoon, but he didn't completely search the area as he was expected to, according to the sheriff.
The sheriff’s office released a detailed timeline of the days leading up to the discovery of their bodies, beginning at around 1 p.m. Friday when deputies were first notified that Cannady and her children, ages 10, 9 and 3, had stopped at a location on Mille Street in downtown Pontiac looking for help.
Deputies immediately deployed a drone to search for the family after receiving the call, according to the sheriff’s office.
Within 10 minutes, a deputy located the family near Water and Mill Streets. The deputy asked Cannady if she needed help and where she was headed, but the mother said she was okay and didn’t need any help. She then quickly walked away from the deputy, according to the timeline.
Five minutes later, a second deputy came across Cannady inside McLaren Oakland Hospital in downtown Pontiac. The deputy questioned her in depth as to whether she and her kids were okay and if she needed assistance. The Deputy repeatedly offered aid.
She told the deputy she was fine, was at the hospital for a now completed medical visit for her son and was awaiting a ride she had already arranged. She again refused help from the deputy the hospital. After that conversation, Cannady and her family left the hospital.
The sheriff’s office says the deputy followed the family as they walked down Woodward and repeatedly tried to convince Cannady to come to the nearby Pontiac substation or get in the patrol car to be taken somewhere to get out of the elements.
He told her multiple times that she was not in trouble and that he would not ask her name or identification, but he simply wanted to help her and the children.
Cannady was wearing a coat and the children were wearing sweatshirts and were wrapped in white bed sheets. She continued to refuse all attempts for assistance made by the deputy.
The deputy maintained contact with Cannady and followed her to a nearby school where he again pleaded with her to accept some form of assistance. He offered to take the family to the substation and provide coats for her children. Again, she declined any assistance and said she had family nearby and she was fine and walked away.
The sheriff’s office says the deputy spent about 20 minutes with Cannady until 1:30 p.m. on Friday. In those conversations, she was lucid, did not appear to be suffering from any medical or mental health crisis and asked several times to be left alone.
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About two hours later, according to Cannady’s family, she and the kids went to her mother’s apartment and the children were put down for a nap. But after a half hour, Cannady woke them up and fled the apartment because she and her mother had been arguing about Cannady’s mental state, as the mother felt Cannady needed professional help.
The family later told Detectives that Cannady had been having mental health problems for the past three weeks, the sheriff’s office said.
Around 4:30 p.m. Friday, deputies met with Cannady’s aunt, who sought advice on how to properly commit Cannady to a treatment facility to get the help her family said she needed.
Deputies visited Cannady’s apartment on North Perry to perform a welfare check, but there was no answer or indication that anyone was inside the apartment.
After her death, Investigators learned Cannady was the woman other deputies had previously encountered with the children and that Cannady believed some unknown person (or people) was trying to kill her and the police were involved in the conspiracy.
The children had been told to run if they saw the police, according to the sheriff’s office.
At 4:43 p.m. Friday, around the same time deputies were meeting with Cannady’s aunt, the Sheriff’s Office dispatch was alerted that a woman walking with several children was seen near Franklin and Rapid in Pontiac. The caller said the kids weren’t properly dressed for the cold temperatures.
“A deputy responded to the call for an area check but did not completely search the area as he was expected to and did not find or make contact with the family,” the sheriff’s office said.
That deputy’s performance is now under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit. That deputy’s name has not been released.
At approximately 5:20 p.m. Friday, two deputies were ordered by a Command Officer back to the area of Rapid and Franklin to search for Cannady and her children, but after almost 20 minutes and a complete perimeter search, they were not found.
At 7:33 p.m., three deputies were again sent to the area again, but a search of more than a half hour came up empty.
Officials say the sheriff’s office didn’t receive any calls regarding the family on Saturday, but a canvas of the neighborhood after their death revealed that Cannady knocked on the door of a home in the 200 block of Branch St. at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
When someone answered the door, Cannady told them she was at the wrong address and walked away. No call was made to dispatch.
Detectives are unaware of any other contacts the family had with anyone on Saturday.
On Sunday at around 3 p.m., the 10-year-old girl – Cannady’s daughter – knocked on the door of a home and told the people inside that her family was dead in a nearby field.
Authorities responded to the 200 block of Branch St. and found the mother and her two sons lying on the ground in a vacant field that was once the location of the Lakeside Housing Project.
The investigation determined the family had spent the previous night in a vacant field with the temperatures well below freezing. The deaths were ruled accidental, and the Oakland County Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death for each as hypothermia.
The daughter was taken to the hospital where she remains in stable but improving condition. She will be placed with family members after she is discharged.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help care for the 10-year-old girl.
“It is clear, as a society we need to find ways to better connect communication and the dots between families, mental health resources, social services, and law-enforcement to ensure people don’t fall through the cracks in the future like this tragic situation,” Bouchard said, per a press release. “I renew my call for state and federal funding to embed social service and mental health practitioners into our agency that can be immediately brought into play in situations like this. Every day we respond to circumstances that those resources in combination could potentially be a real lifesaver. Our prayers go to the family and friends.”
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