Bring Harper Home

We have been holding off going public with this, but we have hit a dead end & are in urgent need of help! We are literally fighting for a child’s future! Please please READ! 

Averys sweet daughter, Harper who is 4, lost her mother just a few months ago & has now lost her father.

Let me explain from the beginning...

On December 11th, 2020 Harper’s mother, Kirstie Flood, was arrested & charged with the MALICE MURDER of a precious 2 year old baby girl she was babysitting. DFCS placed Harper with the nearest relative, which was the maternal grandmother who also lives near ATL. DFCS failed to even inform Avery. 

Even though Avery pays his child support religiously & has been proven biological through a DNA test, the law does not recognize him as “legitimized” because he never took Kirstie to court. We thought about it many times, but were working on our relationship with Kirstie & were seeing Harper pretty regularly. We didn’t want to rock the boat. Boy were we wrong. We could have never imagined something like this ever happening. As of now, Avery has zero rights to his daughter. We needed a lawyer ASAP. We tried to take out a loan, but were denied so started saving. 

In the meantime, we made sure to video chat Harper every night, talking & playing for hours at a time.. We were able to go visit her the day after Christmas & bring her all of her presents from Santa. 

Kirstie called us several times from jail proclaiming her innocence & spinning this story of the baby girl falling at the park & hitting her head which resulted in her death. It sounded unlikely, but we just couldn’t believe that she was capable of something like this, so we tried our best to support her.

As we saved for a lawyer, we stayed informed watching the news on this case.. The more we learned about the evidence... the less we believed in Kirstie’s innocence. 

Kirstie kept calling, a lot of the time she was very arrogant with Avery about how he has no rights to Harper & that he is not getting her. Other times, she was laughing & acting like she didn’t have a care in the world. 

Red flags were going off in our minds.. and our worst fears were confirmed when we saw the family of this sweet baby girl on Dr. Phil revealing the details of their daughter’s murder. The evidence was overwhelming! Our hearts sank. 

We stopped answering Kirstie’s phone calls & decided to put that money toward a lawyer. We had to focus on Harper & Harper alone. We continued our nightly video chats & planned to go visit Harper on the weekend of her birthday this month. We had our trunk packed with her birthday gifts & she was so excited to see us & her brother, Leighton. 

The week we were supposed to go, Kirstie’s mother got Harper to ask us on the video chat why were not answering her mommy’s phone calls. Wow! Why in the world would you ever put an innocent child in the middle of this mess? Well that’s what they’ve always done.. they have held Harper over Avery’s head from day one & if Avery was not performing to appease Kirstie, she would cut off contact with Harper until she wasn’t bitter anymore.

We finally retained a lawyer (which was very expensive) to file for legitimacy & custody. Finally some hope. But at the same time we were very nervous bc we knew from past experiences that once Kirstie & her mother were served papers they would most likely take Harper from us out of pure spite. 

A few days later, it happened. Kirstie’s mother messaged Avery saying if he cannot communicate with Kirstie, he cannot contact Harper. 

Our trip was canceled & we have not been able to even talk to Harper since then. We have called every night & pleaded with the grandmother, but she is not budging. Not only has Harper’s mother been ripped from her, but now her father.

If it were as simple as answering a phone call from Kirstie, we would. But we know she only wants to call to bless Avery out & tell him he’s never allowed to see Harper, especially once she is served. We know her. That’s just the type of person she is, and that’s all I’ll say about that. 

It’s been a really rough couple of weeks & our hearts are hurting for Harper. She didn’t ask for any of this. 

We just received an invoice from our lawyer today. Thousands of dollars have already been used up & the papers are not even filed. They’ve only drafted them & researched the case.  Another blow. We were warned that this would be expensive because it’s such a high profile case, but we thought we would at least have the legitimation & custody papers filed with our deposit. So in order to proceed with filing we have to come up with more money immediately. 

Y’all, we are living on prayers one day at a time. I know this is all in God’s hands, so we are clinging to hope. So here we are humbling ourselves to ask for help. We don’t know what else to do right now. We love this little girl so much & she has such a bright future ahead of her. We are a loving, Christian home & we know Harper will flourish here. She needs stability. Harper has expressed out of her own mouth, at 4 years old, that she wants to be here with us. Our 1st & foremost priority would be to get her into counseling to learn how to cope with these traumatic events. Her grandmother has failed to do so when we have urged this from the beginning. She is living in a home with her grandmother alone, no other family around, focused on Kirstie & her case. She hears her mom constantly calling crying on the phone, her grandmother having breakdowns...please help us get her out of that & into a happy, healthy loving home.

We have a ballpark estimate of $10,000 for attorney fees, but anything will help just to keep our case open until we can come up with more money.

  We pray God’s will be done, and also protect this baby & her little heart in the meantime.

Thanks for taking the time to read. Please share with everyone you know!