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A woman and a tow truck driver are learning the hard way what happens if you're not careful about leaving kids in cars. According to the AP:
Police Spokesman Daniel O'Brien says 36-year-old Felicia Nwankwo and Alsip resident Naji Zaareir have been charged with endangering the health and welfare of a child. He says Nwankwo parked the car in a laundromat lot Monday and left the boy in the backseat while she got food at a restaurant across the street.O'Brien says there was a sign in the lot that warned cars would be towed.
Police say 42-year-old Zaareir didn't inspect the car before he towed it. He later called authorities when he found the child sleeping in a car seat.
We're not necessarily going to pass judgment on all people who leave their kids in the car. After all, that happened to us frequently, yet our parents were responsible: we were old enough to behave, we were responsible enough, and our parents never put us in harms way (i.e., leaving us in the car as toddlers in the heat of summer). But this is ridonkulous: be responsible, people.
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This happens at my laundry place all the time. At least the kid was in a car seat. I've called the cops after seeing a woman leave a 2 year old wandering around a mini-van with the windows up in summer. Good parenting.
By saying she "got food" across the street, was this to imply that she maybe just rushed across the street to get take out, or did she sit inside and eat?
I'm going to guess that she went to get food as carryout to bring home and maybe her child was asleep in the car seat and she didn't want to wake him.
Something similar happened here recently when a woman left a sleeping chile inside of her car just so she could take her two older daughters up to the Salvation Army bucket so they could put money they had collected in it. This woman was arrested in front of her crying children. This was ridiculous because the car with her other sleeping child was never out of her line of vision.
Anyone out there with a sleeping child in the car would understand about not wanting to wake the child up. Sometimes a little understanding of the whole situation is necessary before making arrests.
Even on a mild day a car can heat up over 50 degrees above the ambient temperature in a matter of minutes. Schlepping the kid out is a pain, but the alternatives are way worse than some crying.
Whether she was just getting takeout and didn't want to wake the baby or not, she was out of sight of the car long enough for a tow truck to come along, hook up, and take the car away without her noticing. My guess is that even the fastest tow truck driver would take five minutes, and that's if the truck were waiting right there, ready to pounce. That's too long to leave a child alone.
She probably left the kid in the car so it wouldn't get towed. Talk about a backfire.
i'm not saying leave your kid in the car ... i'm just going to weirdly reminisce for a second.
i seem to remember being left in the car, roaming freestyle around the grocery store and target, and playing outside all day until my dad whistled us home. it's too bad the 70s and early 80s went bad at some point. boo-urns.
I'm not against kids having free reign, if anything they're too protected these days to the point of paranoia. But leaving your kid alone, strapped into a car seat in a locked car? Bad times my friend. Bad times.
WTF@ the tow truck driver being charged too?
Tow truck drivers are supposed to check for occupants before hauling a car off.
Something else about this ... the way the article reads, it was the tow truck driver and not the mother who notified police. If true, I have to wonder how long it was before the mother noticed her child was gone?
Police aren't charging the mother because of what might happen. They're charging her because of what did happen.