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Ms. Rueda, who was questioned at length by police, said she thought she had left the child at day care but later discovered him dead in the car when she went to lunch.

How the HELL do you miss the sort of thing? A child is not a wallet, or a pair of eyeglasses to be misplaced in the car by accident! How the hell do you misplace a human being in the same god damn car with you?!

I don't understand how one can forget a child in the back seat. But if the child has fallen asleep and it's quiet back there, then maybe, since we're all human.

Now this would explain why people feel differently about animals, after all a dog will wake up and be trying to slobber all over you in it's excitement to get out and look around, where as a child will not necessarily wake the momnent a car stops.

People get into a daily routine where their kids are at daycare, and the parents are concentrating on work. A parent of tiny children may be operating on very little sleep, and if the infant is sound asleep in the back seat the parent may "remember" dropping it off at day care as usual, though the memory is actually of a previous day. Memory is weird and unreliable thing, as many serious studies of eyewitness testimony have shown. Companies which employ many parents of young children in day care would do well to allow employees to organize a system where someone takes a trip around the parking lot each morning to check on this (and at larger companies, which have security guards patrolling parking areas, have the guards instructed to check for infants).

How the HELL do you miss the sort of thing?

I understand your outrage... and I don't have any children, so I don't know ... but the thing is, I can be incredibly absent-minded, especially when I'm doing things by rote because they are part of my everyday routine, particularly in the morning. My mind wanders horribly when I'm driving (no, no accidents, a little part of my brain is operational in the most basic of senses) but I get to work and sometimes don't remember the drive there. I can really imagine her just mentally wandering off and running on automatic and thinking that she'd already been by the sitters house. When I look back at the last couple of days I can't tell one from the other sometimes. Was it yesterday that I mentioned the movie Gosford Park to my class as I was lecturing? Or the day before? Or Monday?? And I have to think about it.... it was a reference to accent so it had to be in the phonetics lecture so it was yesterday. That sort of thing.

Then again, I never, ever forget to check under the car for cats before I drive off.

I agree and I don't want to start a war between family's with a parent at home and not, but I find it telling that this seems to happen most often to those who do work outside the home. I don't think it's so far fetched to think that someone who does not usually have responsibility for thier child most of the day might forget that the child is in the car with them. I am an at home mother and even when I know i have left them at, say thier aunts house, I still can't help the urge to look back in thier seats. I'm so used to them being around, that when they are not something is missing and I find myself checking anyway even when I know they are not with me. I think that feeling has to work both ways, ie you are so used to them NOT being around that you get used to jumping out of a usually empty car and can forget that a child, especially a sleeping on, is even there. Of course, it's not popular to say that mothers have become so disconnected from thier children.

It's tragic either way, but that woman who went to get her hair done--good grief, the intent to neglect the kids speaks volumes, they are letting this idiot get away with murder!