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EricMM

Babies dying in parked cars

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http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=...Mf8&u=eV4oh

 

(fairly longish)

 

Fatal Distraction

Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?

 

The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larger still. He hunched forward in the sturdy wooden armchair that barely contained him, sobbing softly into tissue after tissue, a leg bouncing nervously under the table. In the first pew of spectators sat his wife, looking stricken, absently twisting her wedding band. The room was a sepulcher. Witnesses spoke softly of events so painful that many lost their composure. When a hospital emergency room nurse described how the defendant had behaved after the police first brought him in, she wept. He was virtually catatonic, she remembered, his eyes shut tight, rocking back and forth, locked away in some unfathomable private torment. He would not speak at all for the longest time, not until the nurse sank down beside him and held his hand. It was only then that the patient began to open up, and what he said was that he didn't want any sedation, that he didn't deserve a respite from pain, that he wanted to feel it all, and then to die.

 

The charge in the courtroom was manslaughter, brought by the Commonwealth of Virginia. No significant facts were in dispute. Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until the day last summer -- beset by problems at work, making call after call on his cellphone -- he forgot to drop his son, Chase, at day care. The toddler slowly sweltered to death, strapped into a car seat for nearly nine hours in an office parking lot in Herndon in the blistering heat of July.

 

It was an inexplicable, inexcusable mistake, but was it a crime? That was the question for a judge to decide.

 

So what do you guys think? Is it a crime to forget your baby in a car and have them die?

Edited by Vitamin X
Good fucking god Eric, I had to scroll for ages on that thing. Please don't paste the full article, a link and short summary will suffice.

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Yeah, I read that Washington Post article the other day and it was pretty brutal.

 

As to whether it's a crime? I can't really make up my mind on that one. For the cases where someone is willfully negligent, like intentionally using the car as a babysitter all day, or there is a previous history of neglect or abuse, obviously charge them.

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Yeah, there has to be some kind of punishment. You're responsible for another human life, like it or not. If your neglect causes the death of an innocent, you still have to pay the price.

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I think for the most part, like the article states, the parents are punished in their own personal hell. Unless there is willful neglect like a case here in Utah when The Dark Knight came out some father left his 18-month old kid in the car while he went in to watch the movie.

 

Fortunately a guy happened to notice the kid in the backseat pointing at her sippy cup and asking for "wa-wa" and he broke the window and got the girl out before she died.

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Guest Czech please!

Cut him a break. It was, after all, The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger 4ever

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Seriously, he forgot his kid for nine hours. That's not an oopsy, that's a crime. It ain't worthy of the death penalty by a long shot or even life but seriously, yeah you have got to do some time even if it's at a mental hospital for their own good to deal with what happened.

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In his comments section yesterday Gene admitted that he forgot about his daughter in his car one day, and only realized she was there when she said something. He would have definitely jumped up, slammed the door, and walked away.

 

So he decided he had to do a story like this, especially after a similar case last year.

 

He still maintains that in the right circumstances without extraordinary (literally) precautions, it could happen to anyone.

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We get so caught up in our day-to-day bullshit: remembering appointments, what we have to do today, etc., that it seems completely plausible for anyone to be absent-minded enough to forget to drive to day care before heading into work. I'm actually terrified of doing this, since I can be a space cadet at times.

 

I have to take issue with the article saying "slowly suffocated to death." I haven't read the full article, but I've also read that in the summer it only takes a handful of minutes to bake a baby to death (within 10 minutes, your car can reach something like 140-F).

 

 

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