SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A measure aimed at protecting children for whom one parent is a primary suspect in the other’s death is now law after Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed the measure this week.
The law Herbert approved Thursday comes after urging from the 20-year-old son of a woman found dead in a bathtub in 2011.
Pelle Wall, citing fears and suspicions about his father, urged legislators to allow juvenile district court judges to order that children be temporarily removed from the suspect parent’s home.
Wall’s father, John Brickman Wall, 49, is a Salt Lake City doctor who has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the killing of his ex-wife, university biologist Uta Von Schwedler. The case is pending in a Utah court.
After police made his father a person of interest in the death, Wall spent his mother’s inheritance on legal bills to push authorities to take his siblings, then 16, 12 and 11, away from his father, the Deseret News reported (https://bit.ly/1h3PflG ).
Pelle Wall slept with a knife under his pillow, he said, fearing what his father might do to himself and his siblings.
Two years after police listed Wall as a person of interest, John Wall was arrested and charged with criminal homicide in his ex-wife’s death.
“I think it has really tremendous potential to save a lot of lives,” Pelle Wall said Thursday. “I know it would’ve been an immediate relief for me and my family.”
Herbert on Friday said the law gives judges power that could save lives and protect children.
Rep. Craig Hall, R-West Valley City, sponsored the bill in the House. Hall has said the measure is specific enough that it protects children without damaging parental rights.
Similar legislation in Washington state last year sought to quickly remove children from such situations. It stemmed from the 2009 disappearance of Susan Cox-Powell, whose husband became a suspect in the case. Josh Powell later killed himself and his two children in an explosive house fire in 2012. Before his death, he had partial custody of his two sons.
Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, co-sponsored the Utah legislation. He said West Valley City police officers said that had the bill been in effect, they would have named Powell as the primary suspect.
Pelle Wall is now attending college in California. He and his siblings have since been adopted by another family.
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