More than once, while driving around completely alone in my car, I've had the sudden and shocking feeling that I forgot one of my children somewhere. The feeling is quick -- over in an instant. But it still leaves me a little stunned. And I can't help but think very purposefully, OK, where's that one. And her sister. And, wait, who has the baby? Oh, right. Check, check, annnnd check.
So when I hear stories about parents who have accidentally forgotten their children in the back seat of the car -- long enough for the child to overheat and die -- I have never once though oh, that could never happen to me. I've also never thought that parent committed a crime -- murder even.
But knocking around there somewhere in my brain is the thought that somehow the parent should have known he or she was way overextended and maybe, like me in the car, should have done a mental inventory, should have known this was a possibilty. Looks like I'm not alone.
Some prosecutors take it a step further and charge the parents with manslaughter or murder. So while they grieve over the most unforgiving mistake they'll ever make, they're also fighting to keep themselves out of jail.
The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten writes a very detailed piece, "Fatal Distraction," about a dozen or so cases of a child who was unintentionally left in the car to die. His story, which is very emotional -- line up a box of Kleenex before you sit down to read it, gives details of some of the more recent cases. Like how it's even possible to forget a child in a car. Why one parent might be charged with a crime and another the next county over might not.
And what, exactly, happened that day and how did these people react when they realized what they had done. The alignment of events that led to such a tragic oversight will sound frighteningly familiar when you read them. And might make how you feel about these parents change.
One couple lost their only child, a boy they had adopted from Russia. Miles Harrison (pictured above) was charged with the boy's death. He was also held up in Russia as the poster adoptive parent and why the country should shut down adoptions from the U.S. They won't likely be allowed to adopt again.
Another mother still drives the car that her child died in.
Plenty have contemplated suicide.
Child death due to hyperthermia -- overheating -- in the car happens 15 to 25 times a year, the bulk of the deaths between spring and fall. Some are indeed the result of real negligence -- a parent who uses the car as a daycare, for example. How close have you come to this happening to you?
Weingarten's story ends on a hopeful note, which I won't spoil for you here. But suffice it to say, these parents share an understanding of a situation and they help each other through it -- sometimes in unimaginably joyful ways.
So how have you reacted when you hear these stories? Are these parents criminally negligent? Murderers?
Photo: Washington Post
