San Diego police Lt. Andra Brown said in a statement that detectives conducted “a thorough and comprehensive investigation that included dozens of interviews, reviewing of available video footage, and collecting background information to determine what led to the deaths.” The determinations were made in consultation with the San Diego County medical examiner, police said.
However, an attorney representing Wilkins’s parents and sisters disagreed and accused the city of shirking liability — the city owns 70 percent of the ballpark, while the Padres own 30 percent. Dan Gilleon told the San Diego Union-Tribune he intends to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and Petco Park.
“The city doesn’t want to explain why it concluded that a young mother would kill her only child at an event where witnesses said she was happy,” Gilleon said in a text message to the Associated Press. “To me, the city is acting like any other defendant in a lawsuit: blame the victim, especially if they are not able to defend themselves.”
Gilleon told the Union-Tribune that police “refused to provide us an ounce of information” and “flat out refused to explain” its suicide-homicide conclusion.
Brown wrote in an email to the newspaper that police “do not typically [release] information to the suspect’s family” and said the family had been notified of the suicide-homicide finding. She did not say whether investigators had explained what led them to that finding.
Wilkins and her son had been in a dining area on the concourse level, police said in September, and fell roughly six stories to the sidewalk on Tony Gwynn Drive at about 3:50 p.m., shortly before the game began at 4:15. They were pronounced dead at 4:11. The father of the boy was at the ballpark at the time, according to the police report.
In September, witness Kathryn Benson-Billing said she had watched with alarm as a woman holding a toddler leaped onto a picnic table bench in a concessions area. She lost her balance and fell, then jumped back up. Within seconds, she fell over the roughly waist-high railing.
“Everybody was in shock,” said Benson-Billing, who said she was having a snack in the concessions area when the pair fell. “It just happened so fast.”
Benson-Billing said she was about 10 feet from the family and was stunned by what she saw. “I keep reliving it and reliving it,” she said, and “still can’t figure out how exactly it happened.” The woman, she said at the time, appeared to be happy, jumping around and bouncing her toddler. She spoke with police about what she saw, hoping to help their investigation.
On Wednesday, Gilleon called it “extraordinarily dangerous and stupid” that picnic tables had been so close to the railing, writing in a text message to the Union-Tribune that “like any other property owner, [the city was] required to keep people on [its] property safe.”
The Padres have had no comment on Wednesday’s developments, but in a statement released the day after the incident, the team said it was “deeply saddened by the loss of life at Petco Park last evening. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of those involved. We will continue to refrain from comment on the nature of the incident as it is an ongoing investigation by the San Diego Police Department.”
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