[Tax-chick]

"Just cause we're incarcerated, doesn't mean we're bad people, " he later added. "We made some bad choices in our lives, but we're still, we're just like everybody else. We're just paying our debt for what we did wrong."

Reasonable response, there.

I wonder if the kids were wearing PFDs (not that this would save them from hypothermia), but more to the point, 8 and 10 years old? In January on a flooded river? What was their brother thinking?

[MissMagnolia]

A couple of years ago, we had two young kids (13) go out in a canoe in February on a large reservoir. The water was 40 degrees. They capsized (so it is theorized) and being 1,000 feet from shore, hypothermia got them pretty quickly. The search for the bodies was heart-wrenching to watch. Kids just don’t think about things like cold water and ‘what if’ something happens ... I’m sure these kids on the river didn’t either. They got really, really lucky.

[Bigg Red]

In January on a flooded river? What was their brother thinking?

&&&
My husband said something similar. My answer was, “He’s 16. It was an adventure. Sometimes kids do dumb stuff like this.”