Maybe I'm missing something.
year-old big brother to cross the road by themselves.
The parents said the children were with their mother when they asked to meet their father at the store, and she allowed them to leave, according to The Gaston Gazette. The brothers had to cross the busy, four-lane road, but attempted to go between crosswalks.
Witnesses told WSOC-TV of Charlotte that Legend [the 7-year-old] stepped into traffic as his older brother attempted to hold him back.
[The father] said he was on the phone with his elder son when the younger child was hit.
“I heard my oldest son yell, ‘Legend, no!’ so I hung up and ran. I just ran to find them,” he told the local television station. (Source: NBC News)
How god-awful. Kids likely told to be careful. Look both ways. Cross at the crosswalk or lights, if there were any.
How god-awful. Impulsive knucklehead 7-year-old shakes off his big brother and jumps in front of a car.
How go-awful for the mother who okayed the trip. For the father who was on the phone when his son was struck. For the 10-year-old big brother who couldn't save his kid brother's life. (And yes, for the Jeep driver who by all accounts wasn't speeding or driving negligently/erratically.)
So how can we make this devastating incident even worse?
Why, charge the parents with involuntary manslaughter (a felony) and felony child neglect. Jail them and set their bond at $1.5M each. Which means that not only are they likely going out of their minds with grief, but they miss their son's funeral because they can't make bail and are stuck in jail.
“In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” police said in a statement.
No argument there, other than the argument that unless you keep them under house arrest - and even then - you can't "ensure a safe environment" for your kiddos.
There may be some missing information on the parents, but so far there's been nothing like "left her baby in a sweltering car while she went to the casino to play the slots all day" or "he went on an all-night binge, leaving the 7-year-old in charge of four other children under the age of five, when one of the kids started playing with matches..."
It sure doesn't strike me as negligent or man-slaugherty to let your kids cross the road, even though it turns out to have been a fatally dumb idea.
Back in the carefree days of free-range children, here's something that almost happened to me when I was the 10-year-old big sister taking care of my 1-year-old sister.
I had gone with my friends Susan and Bernadette to the junky little shopping center in our neighborhood. The anchor stores at the Webster Square Plaza were Woolworth's and Zayre. So you get the picture. But it was an endless source of fascination - and frequent visits - for me, Susan, and Bernadette. If we had a dime, we'd go, wander around, and split a bag of peanuts. If someone had fifty cents, we'd look through the Nancy Drews and get one that none of us had read yet.
On this trip, we had babies on board. I was pushing Trish in a stroller. Susan's brother Joe was only about 6-months old, so probably in a baby carriage.
We were crossing Main Street/Route 9, a four-lane road - no crosswalks that I remember, and the only traffic lights were one in the opposite direction, and one at the top of the hill near home.
Anyway, we were careful kids - looked both ways, etc - and a car heading up the hill - just at the corner of Brookline Street - had stopped when they'd seen us and waved us across. And then, out of nowhere, passing on the right came this car screaming right at us. We raced to get out of their way, swooshing those babies out of danger and collapsing on the Ferry's front lawn when we arrived on the other side.
There but for the grace of God...If such a thing exists.
Anyway, a couple of weeks after the initial charges were made against the NC parents, they lowered the bond to a more reasonable $150K each. (I couldn't find word on whether they've gotten out.)
Maybe there's more to the parents' story. Or maybe it's just that this is a poor, mixed-race couple that it's easy to puff up on.
What I do know is that that family is dealing with immeasurable, unfathomable grief. And local law enforcement seems to be just heaping on.
Fast forward, and the parents' stories shifted a bit - but not, to my non-legal mind, materially. The mother didn't okay the trip; she opposed it. She wasn't at home when her child was hit, she was grocery shopping. The father had sent the kids to Subway to pick up some food; they hadn't asked to meet him there.
In any case, a few weeks after the little boy was killed, the parents were allowed to plead to a lesser charge - felony child abuse inflicting serious injury - and were given suspended sentence of 19-32 months and 36 months probation.
District Attorney Travis Page explained, “My heart is broken for a young boy that will grow up without a brother, a motorist that will never forget the sounds and images of a horrible accident, and candidly, for parents dealing with the unimaginable loss of a son,” said District Attorney Travis Page. “There is no prison or punishment worse than a parent living with the knowledge their decision-making and their actions caused the harm of their own child. These parents do not deserve prison—they need mercy, they need grace, and they need a community to support them and other struggling parents in hopes that a tragedy such as this will never happen again.” (Source: WSOC TV)
Well, this sure seems more appropriate. But I'm still of the opinion that if this family was wealthy, or even "just" middle class - doctor, lawyer, hedgie, teacher, accountant - they wouldn't have been charged to begin with. They would have had to live "with the knowledge their decision-making and their actions caused the harm of their own child," without having had to miss their kiddo's funeral and having to plead guilty to a felony.
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Image source: WBTV.
Tragic. These folks are suffering enough.
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