Raleigh man accused of trying to kill children had troubled past

The wife of a man charged with trying to kill his three children this week sought a domestic violence protective order against him before their marriage.

On May 15, 2009, Alan Tysheen Eugene Lassiter’s then girlfriend, Ashley Ivey, successfully sought the order in Durham County. At the time the couple had a son and lived together in Durham, according to the document.

“He verbally threatened to throw hot oil in my face and cut my hair off. He also threatened to take my son from me for a long time,” Ivey wrote in the complaint. “All this started because I didn’t want to marry him. Things of this nature have happened in the past.”

Four days later, she had the order dismissed, and the couple sought a marriage license the same day from the Durham County Register of Deeds, according to the couple’s application and marriage certificate. They got married June 1, 2009.

On Sunday evening, Lassiter, 29, threw his two daughters, ages 3 and 5, into a pond at Audubon Lake apartments, near Interstate 40, north of The Streets at Southpoint, according to police. Lassiter’s 7-year-old son got away, police said.

Lassiter called 911 just after 9 p.m. and said Child Protective Services was trying to take his children. He told the dispatcher he had tried to get help because he was dealing with “pedophilia things” and “sexual desires,” but that CPS turned its back on him.

David Earp, an off-duty Durham County sheriff’s deputy who lives at the apartment complex, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that he received a call about a disturbance near Shearwater Drive. He put on his sheriff’s office T-shirt, grabbed his equipment and drove there.

Earp walked up and heard a baby crying, he said. He shined his flashlight in the water and saw the two girls. The 5-year-old was above the water crying. The 3- year-old was submerged.

“I dropped my radio and just went in there, went out to about chest deep, and grabbed both of them and brought them to dry land,” he said.

One girl was unconscious, and Earp and other officers took turns doing CPR until emergency workers arrived, he said.

“We worked on her, it felt like a good 15, 20 minutes or so,” he said. “And they put her on the stretcher and took her off to the hospital. I just hope she has a positive outcome.”

The 3-year-old remained in critical condition Tuesday, while the 5-year-old’s status was good, a police spokeswoman said.

Lassiter was charged with three counts of attempted murder and is being held in the Durham County jail on a $2 million bail.

Police calls

For a while, Lassiter lived with his wife and children at Country Club Homes, a cottage-style apartment community in the Hayes Barton neighborhood in Raleigh. A person who now occupies the family’s former apartment said he has lived there about five months.

On Feb. 8, there were three calls requesting police assistance at the family’s address between 8:54 and 10:03 p.m., according to Raleigh Police Department records.

Officers went to the apartment twice, after getting a call from someone at the apartment and at the request of Child Protective Services, said Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue. Officers also called the apartment that night at the request of someone there.

“In each case somebody wanted to speak with police about the general situation at the residence,” he said. Lassiter was not at the apartment, he said.

On Feb. 9, involuntary commitment papers associated with the address were delivered to The Crisis and Assessment Center in Wake County, according to police records and Sughrue, who would not say whose name was on the papers.

Efforts to reach the couple’s family members Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Staff writer Anne Blythe and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 3:54 PM with the headline "Raleigh man accused of trying to kill children had troubled past."