3 blocks isn’t that far. She wasn’t the only mother/father that let their kids walk as Jessica met up with other kids doing the same thing. Very common around here, still. I know after tragedies like this, we all say we would have done it differently, but these are really good neighborhoods, you feel safe.
When I was a kiddo, a country kid stranded in town because my parents had a business there, I wandered all of that town all day long, walked, biked, went into houses.
This reminds me of that book ‘The Lovely Bones’. It was a
twisted neighbor who did it in the book. Drove the family
apart and ruined their lives in the book.