A father convicted in the methamphetamine death of his 2-month-old son in 2016 has reached a plea deal with county prosecutors to resolve pending charges alleging he possessed multiple images of children being sexually abused by adults.
Bradford Ross, 27, of Concord is expected to plead guilty in Merrimack County Superior Court on Feb. 18 to two counts of possession of child sexual abuse images. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors would dismiss eight other felony charges pending against him for the same crime.
Under the plea agreement, Deputy County Attorney George Waldron and defense attorney Jim Rosenberg will recommend that a judge sentence Ross to serve one year at the Merrimack County jail in Boscawen on one of the charges. They will also recommend a suspended 3½- to seven-year state prison sentence on the second charge. That prison sentence, if approved by the judge, would be suspended for five years on conditions of good behavior.
Ross will be required to register as a sex offender and could be on probation for up to two years. Attorneys are asking that Ross undergo a psychosexual evaluation and follow through on any of the recommendations that result from it.
A judge previously sentenced Ross in January 2018 to 2½ to five years in state prison on a prohibited conduct charge for handling methamphetamine in close proximity to his son, Cayden Ross, who died in August 2016 of methamphetamine intoxication. Ross also received a suspended three- to six-year sentence for possessing a controlled drug with intent to distribute. Charges of negligent homicide and manslaughter were dismissed as part of a plea deal in that case.
Just shy of two years after sentencing, Ross was paroled from prison this past December.
The newer charges against Ross stem from a lengthy investigation by Concord police that began after Cayden’s death in the village of Penacook. Police said the family was living in “deplorable” conditions, and that Ross was running a lucrative drug business out of the temporary home, a 14- by 7¾-foot travel camper.
“When we were examining evidence pertaining to the original death investigation, we came across unrelated information that revealed evidence of child sexual abuse images on electronic devices,” now-retired Concord police Lt. Sean Ford said last summer after indictments were handed up against Ross. “We opened up a separate case against him, applied for a search warrant and expanded the scope of our searches to conduct two parallel investigations.”
Police seized two flash drives in late 2016 from a trash bag found in the camper that Ross had been living in with his girlfriend, Kayla Austin, and their first child, a two-year-old girl, according to court documents. Over more than a year, authorities took steps to analyze the evidence contained on those electronic devices in furtherance of their case against Ross.
In recent months, the defense argued that police and county prosecutors waited too long to act on the evidence. Rosenberg wrote in a motion filed with the court in December that Ross had known about the coinciding police investigation into alleged images of child sexual abuse, he may have chosen to proceed differently with the homicide plea offer in early 2018.
Ross is scheduled to appear in Concord on Feb. 18.