LEXINGTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man accused of burying his 11-month-old son in a dog crate in a clump of scrubby pines was denied bond Thursday.
Michael Comer showed no remorse for attempting to kill his son, Koah, and tried to flee the state, Tyler Douglas, lead investigator for the Lexington County Sheriff's Department, told Magistrate Gary W. Reinhart. Reinhart approved a public defender for Comer and set a hearing for Dec. 10.
Comer, 25, has been charged with attempted murder, burglary and unlawfully placing a child at risk in connection with the disappearance and rescue of Koah, who survived and is expected to make a full recovery. Comer has been in custody in Lexington County since Monday, when his son was reported missing.
An attorney for Comer has not yet been appointed.
Koah, who rescuers found after about 24 hours, was released from a hospital Tuesday night, Sheriff Jay Koon said.
John Comer said he’d opened his home to his son and grandson on Monday after Michael Comer said they needed a place to stay. On Wednesday, he showed an Associated Press reporter the small hole on a neighbor's property where rescuers uncovered the child.
“I cannot imagine how somebody could come to the point that that would be the right thing to do, or the thing to do at all,” John Comer told the AP.
Authorities haven’t revealed anything about Comer’s motive. He was sentenced in October to probation after pleading guilty to domestic violence involving the boy’s mother.
Koah’s parents “have had some situations,” the sheriff said.
“Children,” he said, “sometimes get caught in the middle.”
In a 911 call released Thursday, Patricia Comer told a dispatcher that her son had “severe schizophrenia and bipolar and depression.” She said she had been “kindly worried” about leaving Koah with his father that morning. “He threatened to kill himself last night and asked me for some sleeping pills,” she told the dispatcher. “He kept making comments that he was going to take (unintelligible) to New York, which he cannot, because he’s on probation.”
Dozens of first responders scoured the countryside for the boy with reddish blond hair. After a full day of searching, authorities found freshly disturbed soil and heard cries from below, the sheriff said.
The boy likely survived because of cool temperatures and an air pocket created by a towel that was wrapped around the crate below ground, he said.
Koah was soon freed and “clinging to life,” the sheriff told reporters.
Breed reported from Wake Forest, North Carolina, and McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit, Michael R. Sisak in New York and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.
John Comer, the grandfather of 11-month-old Koah Sharp, shows the area where his grandson was found buried alive near his home in Leesville, S.C., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)
Amber Hammond shows a video of her great-nephew, 11-month-old Koah Sharp, on the porch at her home in West Columbia, S.C., on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)
Amber Hammond shows a photo of her great-nephew, 11-month-old Koah Sharp, and her nephew, Michael Comer, at her home in West Columbia, S.C., on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — An Oklahoma man was put to death over the fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s estranged husband in 2001, the first of two executions scheduled in the U.S. on Thursday.
James Pavatt, 73, was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester. He was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. CST, Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West said.
In Texas, John Allen Rubio was set to be put to death later Thursday. The 46-year-old was convicted of beheading three young children he was raising in a 2003 killing that rattled a community along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The U.S. is on track to surpass 40 executions for a second consecutive year, a pace driven by Florida as the death penalty comes under renewed attention. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office, which experts say would be the largest mass clemency in American history.
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. He was fatally shot in the garage of the Oklahoma City home he'd previously shared with his wife as he picked up their two young children before Thanksgiving.
Pavatt, who attended the same church as the Andrew family, had been having an affair with Rob Andrew's wife, Brenda Andrew. She was convicted at a separate trial and sentenced to death.
Weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police someone was trying to kill him after the brake lines on his car were cut. Brenda Andrew told police after her husband was killed that masked intruders shot her in the arm and fatally shot him.
Pavatt and Brenda Andrew went to Mexico with her two children after the shooting and were arrested three months later while reentering the U.S.
At a clemency hearing last month, Pavatt said he was “not guilty of shooting anyone,” and that he'd fallen in love with Brenda Andrew and believed “everything she told me.”
“It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda,” Pavatt told the board. “I can see why the jury believed that we were both involved in Rob’s murder.”
Prosecutors have said that Pavatt and Brenda Andrew plotted to kill her husband, and that no matter who fired the shots, both were equally guilty.
Rubio and his girlfriend, Angela Camacho, were accused in the killings of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in the squalid, windowless apartment they shared in Brownsville, located on Texas’ border with Mexico.
Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.
Rubio’s first capital murder conviction in the killings was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that statements by Camacho were wrongly allowed as evidence in his trial. Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for his second trial but he was once again convicted and sentenced to death.
Rubio, according to court records, wasn’t the biological father of the two older children but treated them as if they were his own.
At various points, Rubio claimed the children were possessed and that he was the “chosen one” intended to save the world. Defense experts diagnosed Rubio as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a determination rejected by prosecution experts.
Defense experts testified his childhood — filled with violence at home, “toxic” parents, drug use and prostitution — damaged him developmentally.
The apartment building where the children were killed was later demolished and the land was turned into a park and a community garden.
Rubio is set to be executed at the state prison in Huntsville.
This photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows James Pavatt in Feb. 2023. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP)
This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows John Allen Rubio on Oct. 31, 2022. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP).
