Deputies charged a woman with lying to police during the death investigation of a young Black boy in southeast Georgia after her son was accused of pushing and killing the child.
Authorities in Jesup, Georgia, started investigating Noah Bush’s death in May after he disappeared from his home. It took less than a day for investigators to locate the 8-year-old’s body in a construction borrow pit filled with water.
They initially ruled his death as accidental, believing he “wandered” into the pit. Bush’s family wasn’t wholly convinced by their findings and hired a private investigator. They also called for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to look into the 8-year-old’s death.
Weeks later, a medical examiner’s autopsy report revealed that Bush died by homicide, leading to the arrests of two children, both 10 and 11.
Authorities charged the 11-year-old child with involuntary manslaughter, battery, concealing the death of another, and criminal trespass. They allege that he pushed Noah into the pit.
The 10-year-old was charged with concealing the death of another and criminal trespass.
Law enforcement also arrested the mother of the 11-year-old boy, Natalie Hardison, and charged her with giving false statements to police, a felony. The 35-year-old Hardison also faces a probation violation and another charge of mandatory education for children between ages 6 and 16, a statute that holds parents responsible for enrolling their children in public or private schools or homeschool programs.
Attorneys for Bush’s family previously called for charges against the adults connected to the alleged juvenile offenders, stating that they “lied” and “helped conceal and obstruct the investigation.”
Bush’s family attorney Mawuli Davis told Atlanta Black Star that Hardison’s arrest is “another step toward justice for the family and for the community that has been organizing and demanding justice for Noah.”
“What we know is that one of the children pushed Noah into the water, went in the water behind Noah, held Noah’s head in the water for some period of time, got out of the water and Noah did not,” Davis stated.
“And so we always believed that a child that comes home soaking wet is going to give some explanation to an adult and that adult would have known that Noah Bush was in a watery grave. The fact that this juvenile’s mother is charged with lying to police during the course of investigation only undergirds the family’s suspicion of her involvement.”
The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office stated that more charges are possible. Davis believes another adult in the 11-year-old’s home might have also played a role in the attempted cover-up.
“There’s another adult who was in that household who participated in a search for Noah,” Davis said. “We’re concerned that that effort was not at all genuine and that he may have known of Noah’s demise. There needs to be further investigation into his actions.”
In a release, Davis revealed that a lead detective testified about a video showing the 11-year-old boy beating a Black child, who is not Bush, and repeatedly calling him the N-word during an incident before Bush’s death.
“I’m certain that detectives are investigating whether or not there was any racial animus that led to these juveniles being involved in Noah’s death,” Davis stated. “[The video] is something that raises concerns when it’s unclear why a 10-year-old and 11-year-old would be involved in the death of a child. With both kids both being white and [Noah] being a Black child, we have to examine. We are duty bound to see if race played a role.”
Davis also expressed serious concerns about the property where Noah was killed, calling out some security concerns.
“People would go out there regularly. There were open entry points, very few criminal trespass signs, so we’re definitely concerned that the county should have been far more concerned with maintaining a potentially dangerous place,” Davis explained.
Davis and his team are looking into civil actions against the county in the aftermath of Bush’s death. No injunctions have been filed at this time.
