A well-known parenting influencer’s husband was reportedly watching a basketball game on which he had placed a $25 bet when their son tragically drowned in the family’s pool, according to police.
TikTok star Emilie and her husband Brady Kiser’s son Trigg died on May 18 after falling into the family’s pool at their home in Arizona.
New revelations from Arizona police on Friday indicated that 28-year-old Brady was occupied with an NBA playoff game, leaving his son Trigg unattended for over nine minutes.
Reports state that Trigg was “in the water for approximately seven of those minutes” before Brady discovered him unconscious, leading to the child’s death six days later in the hospital.
Brady was responsible for watching over Trigg and their newborn, Theodore, while Emily, whose family-oriented social media content has garnered millions of followers, was socializing with friends, as per the police report.
Speaking to officers after the incident, he said he lost site of the boy for about “three” or “five” minutes.
Brady claimed he lacked a clock and couldn’t specify exact times, asserting, “It was mere moments, not minutes; he wasn’t out of sight for long,” according to the police.
However, CCTV footage contradicted this, showing that Trigg was left unsupervised for a minimum of nine minutes, during which he had been playing with an inflatable chair before accidentally falling into the pool, the report mentioned.
Police initially suggested Brady be charged with one count of child abuse but the Maricopa County Attorney’s Officer later pulled this as it was deemed there was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction”.
Kiser’s lawyer previously said he was reassured by the county attorney’s “thorough investigation and confirming that this was a tragic accident”.
According to the report, Brady told officers he wasn’t on his phone before the drowning and, while a basketball game was on the TV, he wasn’t paying attention to it.
The dad told police he last saw his son in the backyard through a window. It was only when he went to get a drink that he noticed the boy in the pool.
He “acted immediately” and performed CPR on the child – leaving him “swaddled on the ground in the patio area”, the report said.
There is “no evidence” the dad failed to act but “it is clear Brady’s attention was divided,” it added.
The report’s release comes after Emilie pushed to have the case sealed because of her large online presence.
She reportedly argued that leaving the material public could open the door for social media sleuths to create disturbing AI recreations – similar to viral content generated after other high-profile deaths, like the Idaho college murders.
In his ruling, Judge Whitten declared: “Specific material harm to her and her family outweighs the negligible public interest in those particular portions of the report.
“The narrow redaction of those sections strikes an appropriate balance between transparency and human dignity.”
Kiser’s attorney, Shannon Clark, later told the Mail Online: “We’re grateful to [the judge] for carefully balancing the important interests at stake and allowing a narrow but meaningful redaction to the Chandler police report, removing two pages that detail the graphic final moments of Trigg’s life.
“These redactions do not alter any material facts of the accident, but they protect the dignity of a little boy whose memory should reflect the love and light he brought to the world.
“From the start, this has been about protecting Trigg and the family’s ability to grieve privately.
“This decision allows them, and the public, to remember him for the beautiful life he lived, not the tragic way it ended.”
Emilie has not commented on the incident.
