Posted on 09/06/2007 7:18:13 AM PDT by Froufrou
No charges will be filed against a middle school administrator whose toddler daughter died last month when she was left in the back seat of her mother's SUV during a heat wave, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Leaving the child in the car for the work day was "a substantial lapse of due care" but did not meet the definition of reckless conduct necessary for prosecution, said Clermont County Prosecutor Don White.
Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby, 40, is assistant principal at Glen Este Middle School, about 20 miles east of Cincinnati. Authorities said she left her 2-year-old daughter, Cecilia, strapped into a car seat for about eight hours on Aug. 23 while she was at work at the school.
Temperatures outside reached about 100 degrees.
I’m gonna say one more thing, then I promise to shut up.....
If that child’s in a car seat, would you not notice it’s little head in the window as you walk back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, then get in the car and move it (is that 5 times)?
God Bless that baby........
“Perhaps the 5 trips to the car and moving the car refers to driving the car up the school doors, walking back and forth 5 times with boxes of donuts, and then getting in and parking the car? I haven’t seen any articles explaining that.”
It’s possible...I really don’t know.
“Did she take the child into the donut shop? Two year olds are not generally rear facing, so why couldn’t the mother see her? My two year olds never shut up so I can’t imagine the child not saying anything in all the time mom was walking back and forth (perhaps for the donuts).”
Unless the child was asleep.
“Yep.Unequal laws. Many parents are afraid to yell at their kids and many more parents are afraid of spanking their kids ,but that lady will be allowed to keep her child.”
Good point.
Spank your kid in a parking lot - get reported for abuse.
“This is becoming more obvious as I read this thread... your conclusions are correct.... I cannot even say more, I feel ill.... and completely horrified...”
I would like to be wrong.
I hope I’m wrong.
“Criminal charges generally require intent,”
not when you’re talking about laws dealing with negligence, as in “criminal negligence.”
There does seem to be a question of intent here.
The 5 trips to the car and then moving it to another part of the lot is very odd.
In "substantial compliance" with UN Agenda 21. (population control)
“If that child’s in a car seat, would you not notice it’s little head in the window as you walk back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, then get in the car and move it (is that 5 times)?”
you would think so.
poor baby.
So, all of these parents who kill their children in hot cars get a free pass. Sort of like a post-birth abortion. Abortion is legal. But killing your children after they are born, isn’t. Except if you kill them in a hot car.
In a comparative negligence analysis, I'd give the gov 50% responsibility. Air bags have yet to save a single life, but have cost hundreds of infants theirs due to being left in the back seat, and due to the bags blowing their heads off.
Better yet, the air bag requirement should be turned into a prohibition.
I'm going to say one more thing also. You mean to tell me with all of the trips to get the doughnuts, juice, and moving the car opening and shutting the door at least six times, that baby never woke up?
There is no way to explain that. There is absoutely NO way that you wouldn't see the child AT LEAST one of those times. Think about it people. Imagine yourself going to your car, opening your door, getting in, parking getting out. NO WAY. No way.
“Stupid doughnuts,” Nesselroad-Slaby said. “How could I not think of my daughter?”
She had left her home in Symmes Township about 6:15 a.m., intending to drop off Cecilia by 7 a.m. at a baby sitter’s house on Picket Way in Union Township.
“When I rushed out of the house this morning, I decided I couldn’t take her to the sitter’s first because I was too early,” she told police.
At 6:54 a.m., Nesselroad-Slaby bought eight dozen doughnuts at the Busken Bakery at 956 Old Ohio 74 for co-workers who were planning for the first day of school Aug. 27.
“I was trying to be everything to everybody – and I failed my daughter,” she said with a sob.
“Where I messed myself up (was going) straight to school” after the bakery, she said. “And then because I did that, everything else left my mind.”
When she got to the school, Nesselroad-Slaby thought she had already dropped Cecilia off at the sitter’s – “because I never go to school and then go to the sitter’s.”
It is just a horrible mistake. She probably would give her life to have this not have happened.
Are you kidding? I NEVER forgot one of my kids anywhere and neither did my wife.
This woman was drunk, on drugs or has a worse problem that I cannot imagine.
Give her a break? Yeah, her neck at the end of a rope.
Amen!
I guess if there's any lesson to be learned is that everyone needs to be more diligent when walking past a car. Children (and animals) don't deserve to die in such a horrible manner.
“I’m going to say one more thing also. You mean to tell me with all of the trips to get the doughnuts, juice, and moving the car opening and shutting the door at least six times, that baby never woke up?”
I guess I’m confused.
Are you guessing this is why she made those trips?
Or do you know this is why she made those trip?
I could’t tell if the 5 times to the car were throughout the day.
When they described her moving her car, I assumed that meant she had already parked, then went out and moved it.
I can think of times my kids slept through alot of noise and commotion.
So you have done this to?
I’m confused with your questions. Here is what I’m saying. Besides it being almost impossible for her to not notice her child, I find it hard to believe that the child would not have been stirred by the closing and opening of the doors, or the moving of the car. And if temps reached 100 degrees that day, they certainly weren’t comfortable temps for ‘car sleeping’ in the morning.
What I’m saying is that people are commenting about these 5 trips to the car being made all at one time.
I don’t know if they are guessing, or if this is what really happened.
That she pulled up to the school in the morning (it wouldn’t have been 100 yet - and the air conditioning would have briefly left the air bearable.) and immediately made those trips in quick succession and then parked her car.
It is possible for a child to sleep through that.
Whether it is possible for a mother to NOT see her child during all that is questionable isn’t it?
I was under the impression she made the 5 trips throughout the work day and at one point moved her parked car to another part of the lot.
I am confused as to how her 5 trips occurred.
In the second scenario I suspect deliberate action.
In the first? Negligence at the least - but I’m not sure about deliberate action.
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