## Facts

- Elizabeth Pollard Noakes operated an in-home daycare and cared for 15-month-old Noah Alexander Colassaco and two other children.
- Noah had repeatedly resisted naps for weeks, often standing in his crib and crying despite Noakes’s efforts to soothe him.
- Noakes placed Noah in a portable crib with mesh sides located in a corner of an upstairs loft bedroom.
- To prevent Noah from standing, Noakes constructed an improvised crib cover by placing a fabric-covered piece of cardboard over the crib and a collapsed metal dog crate weighing about 33 pounds on top of the cardboard.
- Noakes shook the crib and repositioned the dog crate to make it appear stable, then left Noah in the crib under the cover.
- Noakes did not return to visually check on Noah for nearly three hours.
- Noakes later found Noah unconscious, standing with his head and neck wedged between the cardboard cover and the crib’s top rail.
- Noah died; the autopsy determined death by asphyxia due to mechanical compression of the neck.
- After a bench trial, Noakes was convicted of involuntary manslaughter; the conviction was affirmed on appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove criminal negligence (gross, wanton, and culpable negligence) supporting involuntary manslaughter.
2. Whether Noakes’s conduct was a proximate cause of death, or whether the child’s actions constituted an intervening, superseding cause.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the conviction for involuntary manslaughter.
- The court held the evidence permitted a rational factfinder to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Noakes’s conduct was criminally negligent.
- The court held Noakes’s conduct was a proximate cause of the child’s death and the child’s movements were foreseeable, not a superseding cause.

## Legal Principles

- Involuntary manslaughter may be established by an accidental killing resulting from conduct so gross, wanton, and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life.
- Criminal negligence requires more than ordinary negligence and may be shown where a reasonable person would recognize a high probability of death or serious bodily injury from the defendant’s acts or omissions.
- Evidence that a defendant perceived some danger, yet proceeded, may support an inference of reckless disregard.
- Proximate cause is established when the defendant’s negligence sets in motion a chain of events leading to death.
- An intervening act breaks causation only when it is wholly independent of the defendant’s conduct and not reasonably foreseeable; foreseeable reactions to the risk created do not constitute superseding causes.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Noakes’s involuntary manslaughter conviction because placing a heavy dog crate atop a crib to restrain a toddler and then failing to check the child for hours supported a finding of criminal negligence, and the child’s foreseeable movements did not sever proximate causation.


Noakes v. Commonwealth, 280 Va. 338, 699 S.E.2d 284 (Va. 2010)