“Deputies said they also found several weapons and other dangerous items within the child’s reach.”
At least the kid could defend himself.
It sounds like the child had an area in which he could roam. My mother had me on a leash with a muzzle until I was 2 years old.
Sounds like a potentially bad situation and I’m not going to try and defend it, but I will point out that in previous generations, typing children to porches was not that unusual. Let them be outside. But don’t let them run away and get into trouble. It was seen as a reasonable compromise. But we live in a different age now.
What if a bear had found the child?
Now doubt it was a bad scene.
However
I had a younger brother whom at around 4 years old, used to sneak out of the house in the early morning and go long distance around our neighborhood seeking new places to play (flower beds) with his bucket, toy shovel and toy cars.
Usually this was only discovered after an older brother and I finished morning paper routes, would be sitting having our breakfast and mom would come out and ask where our little brother was. Usually we assumed he was still in bed, but mom was asking because he wasn’t.
Usually a not so major search would find him at a nearby neighbors house.
One day, his absence was not noticed until after dad had left for work - usually between 7 and 8. A search on our block didn’t find him. Neither did a more extensive search with the help of neighbors.
Dad was called to come home and the police were called too. Our little brother was found.
My dad had never been more angry - the worry our brother had put mom and dad through.
But dad’s solution horrified us older kids.
He got a very long rope, tied one end around our brother’s waist and the other around a tree in the back yard. He instructed my mom and us that that was where our brother was to remain from whenever he finished his breakfast to whenever my dad got home. Mom could let him in for the bathroom and take his lunch out to the tree. My brother and I were required to check on where he was when we got up to do our routes and when we finished them. Dad didn’t answer how long this would last. His answer was “until I say different”.
The sight of my little brother tied to the tree, no matter how long the rope (about 25 feet), made some of us cry.
True story.
The parents in the story don’t sound like charming characters, and I am not making any excuses for them, but I have experienced, personally, the huge grief and concern of parents whose kid is missing only because, at a real immature age, they wandered far from home.
So cops somewhere still enforce these things, eh?
Every so often, I see a parent, usually a Mom, walking through a grocery store with her child on a short, thin leash. It still happens. I can see why people do it, as some preschoolers can move very quickly, and may get lost.
The Mom and leashed child are always stared at by other people.
This is seen as frequently (meaning almost not at all) as seeing a pet owner walking a collar wearing Cat.
I have seen that only three times in my life.
Each time, either the owner was very old, or the cat was still a kitten. Cat’s do not heel very well, and can be moody walkers.
now the .gov will get to own, control and drug this child-victim for the next 17yrs . ..
I had a child harness for my toddlers. It was beautiful, leather and padded underneath the straps. Without it I would have been a basket case with a toddler and a baby. I had bought it in Italy. Today I would be afraid to use it.
Just turn this guy loose in the general prison population. Case closed.