The Santa Clara County district attorney did the right thing by
not charging the Morgan Hill mother with child endangerment for
leaving her 1-month-old infant unattended in a car during the May
31 carjacking incident.
The Santa Clara County district attorney did the right thing by not charging the Morgan Hill mother with child endangerment for leaving her 1-month-old infant unattended in a car during the May 31 carjacking incident.
To say the least, leaving the infant unattended was a gross error in judgment. Fortunately for everyone involved, the child was found safe in the stolen car hours after the incident had launched a statewide Amber alert. Had the outcome been any different, what greater punishment would there be to a parent than knowing they were responsible for bringing harm to their child?
Parenting is riddled with judgment calls, and many of us have made errors. Our eldest daughter learned to walk well before her first birthday. Not long after this milestone, we were quite startled to learn she could climb as well.
One morning, during our hectic routine of getting everyone ready for work, school, and daycare, without warning, our 11-month old daughter climbed on a kitchen chair onto the table and spilled a cup of hot coffee. She belted out a loud scream, and we scooped her up to discover her little fingers were red and beginning to blister. We wrapped her hand in a cool cloth and rushed her to the hospital. Her pain was heart- wrenching. She would reach out to me to hold her, but unable to ease the pain, she would turn around and seek the comfort of my wife. We passed her back and forth for what seemed like an eternity.
The admitting nurse took us in to examine the burns and ask us questions. “Was there someone in the room with her?” she asked. “Yes, I was preparing lunches, but my back was to her and I didn’t see her climb,” my wife responded. Halfway through the questioning, I began to get the feeling that the nurse was indirectly blaming us for the accident – that somehow it was our fault. After all, it’s a parent’s job to keep a child safe, and we had left a cup of hot coffee out on the table. If we were guilty of anything, it was underestimating our daughter’s physical abilities. We had no idea she could climb.
The experience opened our eyes to the fine line between an accident and neglect. Years earlier, we had adopted our eldest son who was three years old. Prior to his adoption, he had lived in five temporary foster homes. The different placements were a result of a cycle of being removed from his birth mother for neglect, and then returned when she complied with court orders.
The last incident was when a social worker made an unannounced home visit and found our son with a burn on the back of his leg. The untreated wound was an imprint of an iron. No one in the home reported knowing how it got there. The social worker assumed someone left a hot iron on the floor and our son tripped over it. Due to the numerous incidents of neglect spanning 18 months (further complicated by drug abuse within the household), his case was recommended for placement into the foster-adoption system and termination of parental rights.
My wife and I have done our best to keep our four children safe. When we went through the certification process of the County Foster Care program, we felt that all parents would benefit from the training. We went through a long check list of items to child-proof our home, installing safety latches and removing hazardous cleaning products. We were even certified in first-aid and CPR. However, despite these preparations, we’ve made judgment errors, such as the morning our daughter climbed onto the kitchen table and burned her hand on hot coffee.
On May 31, a mother left her 1-month old child unattended in a car. This is a crime according to Kaitlyn’s Law which was passed in January, 2002 and prohibits leaving children under the age of six alone inside vehicles without supervision of a person 12 years of age or older. The law is named after Kaitlyn Russell, a six-month old who died after being left alone in a parked car for over two hours.
Some parental mistakes are not necessarily criminal. In our case, underestimating our daughter’s physical abilities and not appropriately adjusting her environment caused her harm.
On May 31st, leaving a child unattended sadly resulted in a carjacking/kidnapping – a rare but extremely dangerous incident. This incident can serve as a reminder about the many judgments that we all make daily in our parenting, and hopefully, parents will think twice before leaving a child, no matter how short a time, unattended.
Mario Banuelos has lived in Morgan Hill for 21 years. He has served on the south County Dayworker Committee and is a member of the Morgan Hill Community Foundation. He is married and has four children.
