woolfe9998
Lifer
- Apr 8, 2013
- 16,189
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It takes a few seconds of forgetfulness and depending on the temperature only 15 minutes to become fatal.
Not paying attention to a kid while swimming is intentional neglect.
The stories get traction because they are rare and they let people look down on others for being human. Meanwhile no stories about all the kids injured and killed because their parents couldn't be bothered to properly install a car seat or adjust it for the kid.
The actually happened to one of my mom's co-workers 25 years ago. He was an extremely nice guy and a good dad. It was absolutely devastating. The company had on-site day car in the parking lot. He picked up his daughter for a check up at his normal lunch time, afterwards he grabbed some drive through and she fell asleep in her rear facing car seat. He was thinking about an upcoming meeting he was late for. When he got back to the parking lot he just found a spot like he did everyday after lunch and ran inside for his meeting.
Easy to claim that he was dumb or horrible and that you'd never do it yourself, but telling yourself that you'd never do that makes it more likely you will.
The line between typical neglect and criminal negligence in parenting is blurry. It depends not strictly on the situation (hot car v. drowning as examples) but on the totality of circumstances. Time is just one factor. If it took only 15 minutes I wouldn't consider that at a criminal level because there is a lack of foreseeability. But all the cases I've read involved many hours.
I'm not the only one who thinks that, at least implicitly. Eric Garner died from a 12 second chokehold. Cop wasn't prosecuted, because people tend to view that as a freak occurrence with a victim who had unusual sensitivities. George Floyd was 9:42. A time which was repeated over and over again in the media, and even put on signs and t-shirts, signifying its significance. That was ruled as murder. The difference in time moved that up the scale from ordinary negligence to criminal negligence to recklessness (i.e. murder).
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