[missyme]

What's a matter with you? no one has been saying the father is not hurting and prayers for his family in what they are going through are not warranted, but being a bit more responsible would be taking in account that when you have small children you might want to take extra measures like not running over a bunch of leaves because children like to hide and the man did not know the where abouts of his daughter...

[Protagoras]

What's a matter with you?

What a question.

Pray for yourself, you need it more than him.

[beezdotcom]

man did not know the where abouts of his daughter...

The problem in these cases is usually not the "not knowing", it's usually the "not KNOWING you don't know". He may have had every reason to believe they were somewhere else; do you have evidence to the contrary? We all have this need to prove "it can't happen to us, WE'D be FAR more responsible".

And maybe it can't - but we know so few of the facts, it's hard to speculate. Here's one scenario: maybe the little girls told Dad they were going into the house, maybe even actually went in, then slipped around to hide in the leaves to jump out and scare him.