“It’s my daughter, but it didn’t look like my daughter,” her father Ed Cummins said. “She just looked cold. I can’t believe she’s done all this.”
Pilkington’s mother, Lori Cummins, said she spoke to her daughter from jail by phone on Wednesday. Pilkington told her mother that she’s innocent.
Cummins saw her daughter last week and didn’t have any suspicions that she may have killed her children.
“She’s quiet, she keeps it inside,” Cummins said.
Police have accused her of killing 3-month-old Noah Pilkington on Tuesday; 4-year-old Gavin Pilkington in April and 3-month-old Niall in July 2014.
“I just wanna drop,” Ed Cummins said. “I’m torn up … When I learned of this, I mean, I was totally floored.”
Last week, a judge returned Noah and his 3-year-old sister Hailey to their parents against the recommendation of the Logan County Prosecutor’s Office and the Logan County Children’s Services. Noah died six days later.
Bellefontaine police arrived at the apartment about 3 a.m. Tuesday after receiving a 9-1-1 call from Pilkington that her son wasn’t breathing. Officers attempted CPR and Noah was transported to Mary Rutan Hospital, where he later died.
Pilkington later told Bellefontaine Police she smothered her three sons with a blanket because their father, Joseph Pilkington, paid more attention to them than their daughter, Logan County Prosecutor William Goslee said.
Hailey Pilkington is in foster care now.
“The community is confused because they don’t really know what the whole story is from beginning to end,” said Pilkington’s uncle Jeff Skaggs. “And that will confuse you if you don’t know the whole story and you’re only hearing this and that.”
Ed Cummins said he has yet to speak with his daughter.
“I do want to talk to her, you know, to try to get a little closure on why she did this,” he said, “but honestly I don’t even know where to start with it.”
A preliminary hearing for Pilkington’s murder case is scheduled for Aug. 25, according to court records. Pilkington remains booked in the Logan County Jail.
The murder case should be heard by a Logan County grand jury within the next week, Goslee said.
The community in Bellefontaine is shocked by the allegations, said neighbor James Breaston, who lives across the hallway from the Pilkington family.
“I can’t imagine a mother killing any of her children,” Breaston said.
Neighbor Douglas Bracy thought people were pulling his leg when he heard about the homicides at work earlier this week.
“It’s a sorry, sorry world we live in,” said Bracy, who also lives in the apartment complex on East Sandusky Avenue.
He believes the punishment should fit the crime.
“You don’t do that to babies. Ever. They’re our future, you know? Our legacy,” Bracy said.
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