A year after arrest, Heyward gets bond

Update: ABC News 4 reports that Heyward was released from jail around 8:30 p.m. Friday. They've also got video from the release.

Original story: The woman accused of killing her two children by leaving them in a hot car while at work, then trying to hide their bodies in garbage bags under her sink, had a bond hearing Friday at the request of her lawyer, Andy Savage. Sametta Heyward posted bail Friday, a year after being arrested and charged in the deaths. A judge set her bail at $15,000 on Friday, after Savage argued that she wasn't a flight risk.

From The Post and Courier:

Heyward has been in custody since her arrest on charges of homicide by child abuse a year ago Thursday. She is charged with leaving her 4-year-old son Shawn Campbell Jr. and 1-year-old daughter Triniti Campbell in her car while she worked a nine-hour shift at the Disabilities Board of Charleston County on July 29, 2007.

Heyward will be under house arrest, ABC News 4 reports, except for medical conditions or to visit the graves of her two children.

From ABC News 4:

Her attorney, Andy Savage, filed the speedy trial motion. In it, he questioned the tactics of law enforcement. The documents detail the seizure of material from Heyward’s jail cell by police in September 2007. Savage refers to the items as privileged, saying police have destroyed his client’s rights under the attorney client privilege.

In an editorial last August, Charleston City Paper's Will Moredock placed blame on the state for the Heyward case, saying the mother never should have been in a situation in which she had to leave the kids in the car because she couldn't afford child care: "The sovereign State of South Carolina lacked the money to provide child care for Sametta Heyward's children," Moredock writes. "But it will surely find the money to prosecute her and imprison her for leaving her son and daughter in a deathly hot car while she worked a double shift at her job."

Filed in