Posted on 07/11/2014 7:05:34 PM PDT by Kaslin
In spite of the recent tragedies of toddlers being killed or seriously hurt from being locked in a car, I guess it really isn't all that surprising that police are being extra-vigilant to protect kids from hot cars. Some cases, however, like that of a woman in Connecticut being criminally charged for leaving her daughter in a car, are downright ridiculous.
(emphasis added)
Officers were sent to 60 Middle Street on Tuesday where they said Christina Williams, 30, allegedly left her 11-year-old child inside a vehicle.
Police said the interior temperature of the car was about 85 degrees at the time they got to the scene.
When officers opened the car doors, they said the child was responsive and not in distress, and that the car was not "excessively hot."
Police said the child requested to stay inside of the car while her mother went inside a store, and Williams was located in the store and said the same thing.
The mother is due to appear in court at the end of the month.
While an 11-year-old certainly isn't entirely self-sufficient, they're certainly capable of taking care of themselves and letting themselves in and out of a car if they're about to overheat. Many 11-year-olds babysit, for instance. There's a huge difference between leaving an infant strapped in a car seat alone in a car for an extended period of time and leaving an 11-year-old in a not-overly hot car because she asked to stay there.
Williams isn't the only mother being accused of neglecting her children by leaving them safely in a car. Nickie Milem, a woman from South Carolina, is being charged with cruelty to children after she left her children in a running, air-conditioned vehicle with her sister-in-law while she ran into a grocery store.
Child endangerment is a serious crime--but not one that seems to be committed in these cases. This is the nanny state gone insane.
Whoa! A few years ago my sister in Las Vegas said she needed another car. What happened, I asked? Her 12-year-old son took her keys without permission and went joy-riding, and banged it up. 11 years, 12 years, almost the same thing. At least you were at the right place, must have been fun!
You prolly got passed up by the pony express. ;-)
Oooh! I have an interest in Charles Martel. Do you remember the name of the documentary? Thanks!
Oh yes, what an awful story. Thanks for finding it and posting it here. It’s actually quite hard to believe that something like that could happen.
I don’t know, that is I don’t know how many of us managed to survive the forties, fifties, and sixties without police pulling all out of cars our parents left us in while the shopped and did errands, quite obviously the one thing that died for sure was common sense and what we are left with is a village full of idiots.
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Exactly! Family didn’t have an auto with a/c until ‘58, when I was 16. Most people in the neighborhood didn’t have a/c cars until mid-50s and the best we had in houses was swamp coolers that caused mold to grow inside. ...I recall a neighbor who had one of those devices that attached to his driver-side door/window that he filled with water and when driving a small fan would turn, blowing water cooled air inside the car.
I was hunting alone all over this county when I was 11.
Over zealous and in need of payroll money....
As a general rule, we don’t turn our AC on until it hits 90 outside, and I leave my kids at home often.
Am I going to Jail?
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