Re the article: Spoken like a true Nanny State-er. It's the state's fault that this boy closed the trunk of a car on himself and his friends. No personal responsibility on the part of the mother who was SUPPOSED to be watching these boys. Incredible.
If they knew this boy had behaviorial problems and has walked off alone before (as stated in the article), then why in HELL was he left alone AT ALL??? Especially with two younger boys 5 years old??????? The mother who was watching the boys is the one who left them unsupervised is the one to blame for the tragedy, not Child Protective Services of New Jersey!!!
I mean, have you heard ONE statement of contrition on the part of the mother who was responsible for these boys during the time this tragedy occured? No, of course not. Not one statement accepting responsibility for leaving them unattended. No apology to the other families. No admission of fault. No sorrow at her IRRESPONSIBILITY and carelessness and inattention. The fault lies with HER and HER ALONE.
Incredible.My keyboard wants to SHOUT.....
Sounds like someone (parent) is thinking of a lawsuit...
It's a premptive strike...the parents should be charged with child neglect.
Watch for lawsuits soon.
Yep, you got that right. I suspect this kid was a brat, am not buying that he was retarded.
Well, you can't be too hard on the guy. His kids are dead. No parent thinks rationally in that situation.
It was just a terrible accident. Nothing more. You can't keep an 11 year old boy locked in the closet all day long. I can remember when I was a kid in the 60's kids were locking themselves in old refrigerators and suffocating.
Accidents happen.
Looks like a nerve was hit, must be something close to home.
My friend was step parent to two girls for 10 years. The youngest was thrown down the stairs by her abusive mother when she was 18 months. Her father got custody at 3 (after battling the courts because courts seem to think that ONLY bio mothers can parent) and my friend raised her untill 13 (last year). They are now 13 and 14. Her moron of a husband decides to leave her for a super trash woman who didn't even have custody of her own children. He has restricted access to their 'mother' (who until she can afford a divorce has no visitation rights or custody rights) and their NEW stepmother is a monster. The youngest has ran away three times now, walking down a main highway to get away. The house is extremely filthy and the girls went from A/B student (the slower girl is in Special Ed, but still A/B) and the older on the honor roll to both girls FAILING last year. My friend has called DCFS repeatedly to beg them to take a look and see what the h*ll is going on because she has no access to even talk to them. Their new stepmother (and I say that loosely, she is living with a married man) won't even let them go to their grandparents house because they still have contact with my friend. DCFS told my friend that they were closing the case because they think it's a jealous wife issue/custody issue. They never even talked to the kids or went out there. If something happens to these girls, you can bet your ass it will be their fault. For not protecting these kids FROM their parent.
The parents should have watched their kids - imagine leaving kids that young unsupervised in a high crime area after all the media stories about sex offenders targeting kids.
That being said, there's a real problem in America in the past two decades...the decades of "Harpo Productions"... everyone wants to blame someone and the person or people they want to blame typically have deep pockets.
This is a tragedy and it's one of those things that just happens. Children do indeed have a mind of their own and the police department there I'm sure did all they possibly could to find the children. Yes, I've seen the video of the officer right by the trunk. Sometimes it's impossible just to accept loss... it happens and in many cases, there's no one to blame. If anyone is to blame, perhaps it's the parents themselves. But doing so is risky at best... as I said, tragedies do happen where there's no fingers to point (or, there shouldn't be, anyway). In my estimation, there's no one to blame here.
This guy is about to be sued.
It's called deflection.
It should be called divorce.
Amazing that the parents of the 11 year old found time to meet with an attorney on Saturday.
I'd imagine the mother has privately apologized to the family of the other children, although I can't quite picture it mentally. The mind boggles.
I have to wonder about how the father was questioned by the reporter to illicit a statement like this. Maybe we should start calling it reporter Phishing or media Phishing.
Sad.
He is trying to do everything he can to reverse what happened.
I really hate how our local media covered their grief.
If the mother left the kids unsupervised for just a few minutes, as she claims.........then common sense tells you that they couldn't have gotten very far. Therefore, why didn't someone OPEN THE DAMN TRUNK. After all, it wasn't a stranger's car parked in the street. It was the grandmother's car parked on the property (side or back yard), where the kids were last seen playing.
Or the mother is lying and left them unsupervised for a much longer amount of time. That could lead her to think they wandered off.
Either way, mom's at fault. IMO
the police screwed up big time, this is police 101 not advanced police science. they teach this stuff in grammar school and to boy scouts.
Officials said one of the boys had played before in the car, which was owned by Anibal's maternal grandmother. It had been sitting for about three weeks in a shaded, weedy corner of the Cruz family's yard.
The prosecutor said the hydraulic plunger that keeps the trunk from closing was not working, so the lid was able to swing close and lock as soon as the boys stopped propping it up.
He said some periods of hard rain on Wednesday evening may have muffled any noises from the well-insulated trunk, which was parked far enough from the house to make it difficult to hear any voices coming from it.
ping for later read.