And yet another article claims the girls told police that he’s put them in the trunk on multiple prior occasions. In one aspect, that makes me feel a little bit better about him walking away from the car in the sense that this was an established game between them rather than an experiment on his part.
However, if you’re in the camp that says putting your kids in the trunk is never a good idea, then establishing a pattern of it makes things even worse for the dad.
I’m trying to find the weather info for Foxboro on Sunday but I can’t pull it up. I don’t really trust the article’s account that the temps were in the 90’s.
Foxboro MA Sunday 3 pm.
Anybody have better google-fu?
Personally, I don’t think what he did was criminal, it doesn’t look like the judge was too upset either. Set free without bail, hoping Child and Family Services Agency to conduct an investigation.
Letting the kids in the trunk to see what it is like, or to see if they could get out is no problem in my mind. But putting them in the trunk and walking into a building when it is over 90 is pretty stupid, and at least approaches irresponsibility.
I remember when my kids wanted to know what it would be like inside the rooftop carrier. So won time up at our vacation home we let them climb inside with plenty of blankets, and drove slowly on some private roads (maybe 5-10 MPH on dirt roads for a couple of hundred yards) near our vacation place. They didn’t care for it, but were glad they tried it.
At least I had the sense to act irresponsibly in a very private location!
According to Wunderground, it was about 88 degrees in Foxboro around 3pm. Still enough to be a problem over a long period of time inside a closed trunk.
Oh, give me a feckin’ break.
What would they do about the time our 12 year old opened the trunk and shut herself in for an unknown length of time - so she could scare us when we came out and opened the trunk?
This is an idiotic case by an idiotic prosecutor.
When were the children endangered? They had a release latch to let themselves out, fer cryin’ out loud! It’s not like they were toddlers!
I’m so glad there are no actual crimes in Foxboro so they have plenty of time for this kind of nonsense.
Next thing you know, he’ll be letting those kids use stairs - which, as we all know, are potential deathtraps.
OK, walking away (a part I hadn’t read when I posted before) from the trunk seems to increase the negligence factor, but it seems they’d played this ‘game’ before and the girls could have gotten themselves out of the trunk at anytime.
You seem to be arguing both sides of the argument. No need to practice, it’s not that dangerous, and how dare he put them in such a dangerous place.
Just don’t put a six year old in a dishwasher, they really mess up the bottom rack, thrashing around. 
If I were a policeman, well meaning citizens committing some small slip would be my target of choice as well. They are respectful of autority. They cooperate smoothly. They can be made to feel wonderfully guilty. And best of all, they pay their fines and never go wrong again.
Much more satisfying then going after real antisocials and real bread-criminals. Those dangerous bastards make you work your ass of to get them convicted, and if, finally you have scraped your case together, they smirk all the way to jail.
I’m sorry that I was unclear. It isn’t particularly hard, but kids are kids. Sometimes they suck at doing simple things. If you’re going to stick your kid in a trunk for fun, make sure it isn’t a hot day and that you stay close by to let them out if they freak out.
Oh, and six year olds, everybody knows that they melt easily and should only be put on the top rack.
That’s a tough one. If you are sent up for life, will your prison wages be garnished to pay for your kids’ educations? If not, you’ll just be laughing as the munchkins send another family to the poorhouse, and then I’d have to choose death.
I’ve never put kids in a car trunk, but I’m sure I’ve done things w/ them that would garner groans from hypocrites. This guys biggest mistake was allowing his girls to do this in a public place.
I also think that the guy who reported this is something of a busybody and the reporters explanation, of him being a vet and it giving him some special powers of observation, is a bit lame.
All in all, I think most of the people involved are overeacting.
That was my favorite game when I was little too! I was so sad when I could no longer fit through the little passage way.
That’s actually what I was thinking. I’d rather my kids know how such a thing works really works rather than vaguely know about it in theory. You read stories of kids the die in trunks when there was a release right there for them, they just didn’t use it because they didn’t know it was there.
My dad showed me how to use a fire extinguisher when I was 9 years old, so if I really needed it one day I’d know how to use it properly. That meant actually pulling the pin and spraying it. Granted, he didn’t set the kitchen on fire for me to test it, and showing the kids how the emergency released worked without shutting the trunk owuld probably have been enough, but if the kids asked to test it and it was a “controlled experiment” I don’t see how that would be criminal.
In the latter linked article that said he walked away from the car a bit, he was using poor judgement, but hardly criminal stupidity.
Here’s what bothers me about that guy; he watched the girls climb in the trunk and the father close it on them and walk inside the building. He did absolutely nothing at this point, but sit there and watch.
He waited. And waited. A minute passes by. Two. It’s 88 degrees outside. Three minutes go by, and he’s still sitting on his ass waiting while the girls’ lives are potentially being endangered by the rising temperatures inside that locked trunk. And still he waits some more, having no earthly clue how long the man who just locked them in there intends to be gone. Four minutes. Now apparently FIVE FULL MINUTES have gone by before the father comes back.
Dad comes back, lets the girls out of the trunk, obviously unharmed, they get in the car and the family drives away.
Then, and only then, does this wanker bother to phone 911.
HELLO???
If I observed someone shut 2 young girls inside a locked trunk and walk away, that would be the instant 911 would be called. Can you even begin to imagine sitting around for 5 full minutes watching 2 children potentially suffocate in a locked trunk and do NOTHING?
Something about this story smells awfully fishy to me.
People are known to have a bad sense of time… short moments seem very long when you don’t know what’s about to happen. Heck, I do a lot of work done on a timer, and even if I know the method inside out, I still don’t accurately predict when 5 minutes has gone by! Think about it… if the guy walked in to the building, his brother might have been right there waiting for him ready to leave, and he walks back out again, how long do you think that really took? No more than 2 minutes, I’d guess. Maybe less. Of course, the brother might not have been ready and waiting, but still… if the witness said “five minutes” but not “less than a minute” I have the feeling it could be anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes!
I don’t think the kids were ever in danger, but it was a very stupid thing to do. I’m curious to see how this will turn out.
FWIW, it was high 80’s Sunday afternoon where I live, about 30 miles north of Foxboro, so 90’s is quite reasonable.
After reading all the stories, it sounds like the girls have been in the trunk before, know how to get out of it, and wanted to play “Jump out and surprise Uncle Artie”. The DA is out of her mind pursuing this. Hell, he brought his 2 daughters on a 9 hour drive to visit their grandmother in a nursing home. He should get a “Dad & Son of the Year award.” Instead, he’s got some DA claiming he’s a danger to children (she requested one of the terms of bail be no unsupervised contact with anyone under 18).
What in this story indicates that the girls knew how to get out of the trunk? He put them in the trunk, he left the area while they were still in the trunk, then he came back and let them back out after he finished his business. Do we know the make and/or model of this vehicle so that we can check out if there is actually a way to escape via some safety latch? If so, I still wouldn’t put my children in a trunk on a hot day unsupervised. I’m wondering if this “This is just a game we play all the time.” excuse was concocted by the girls after daddy scared them with stories about what might happy to them if daddy has to go to jail.
It turns out that the Chevy Cobalt does indeed have an interior trunk release.
This just leaves the stupidity of letting them play in a poorly ventilated area on a hot day.
Another vote for the girls weren’t in danger. If they knew the trunk release handle did indeed glow in the dark and if they were intelligent enough to use it, I can see how a witness who didn’t know the situation would be freaked out, but no harm done in the end. Except to the witness’s composure.
If that is true, then I think a far more worthy cause can be made for suiing the DA for the emotional harm done to the girls. *“We asked daddy to play “Mobster in the trunk” with us, and no he may have to go to jail for that and photo’s of our family are all over the papers and people say our dad is bad” *.