Mom who threw son off bridge sought help - KOBI-TV NBC5 / KOTI-TV NBC2

Newport, Ore. (KGW News) Nearly a year ago Jillian McCabe was posting cheery videos on YouTube of her 6-year-old son, London, holding a stuffed toy lion while tossing coins in a fountain to make a wish, and her husband, Matt, lying in a hospital bed talking about his sudden struggle to walk and even talk.

As darkness was falling Monday, according to a police affidavit, Jillian McCabe, 34, parked her car at the north end of the Yaquina Bay Bridge here, took her son in her arms, carried him to the middle of the span, and threw him to his death in the water below.

Then she dialed 911 on her cellphone. “I just threw my son over the Yaquina Bay Bridge,” McCabe told the dispatcher, according to a probable cause affidavit police filed Tuesday. London Grey McCabe’s body was found later that night in the water about a mile from the bridge.

“It’s a great tragedy,” said the boy’s great aunt, Tanya McCabe.

Several family members said that Jillian had tried to get therapy to help her cope, but couldn’t find any from public or private providers. They said she felt overwhelmed and was in a mental health crisis.

“I’m losing it a lot but holding it together,” she said in a YouTube video now removed from the site. “And I feel like I’m this caregiver and I don’t feel like a whole person who can take this on.”

Jillian McCabe appeared by video Tuesday in Lincoln County Circuit Court here, where she wore a suicide vest and entered no pleas on charges of murder, aggravated murder and manslaughter, the court reported. The aggravated murder charge, which carries a potential death penalty, was filed because the boy was younger than 14.