Even IF the mother was playing a game with her kid, it was still horrendously stupid, and it DID show negligence for her child’s safety, which IS a criminal act. Even if the child didn’t get locked in, she still would have been teaching her kid that’s fine and dandy to play in the washing machine.
Washing machines are dangerous, even if off, ESPECIALLY for kids! Just like you don’t look down the barrel of a gun, even if you think it’s unloaded.
I agree with Qadgop, and Monster. It was probably a (stupid) game that went horribly wrong. I think that it was still negligent, and that the situation should be assesed. If the mom is not of “low intelligence” I think maybe jail time or a big fine are in order. If she’s just not that bright, and niave too, then get her parenting classes, and fine her. Steps need to be taken to ensure this doesn’t happen again, that’s for sure.
Jail time for stupidity without malice seems a bit over the top, unless there is more to it. If its a straightforward case, the pain, regret and humiliation of the situation ought to suffice. Let’s save our prisons for the wilfully wicked; we’ve got plenty of them.
Would that actually work? (Have you ever tried?) Just curious. I’m not sure this solution would have occured to me if I were on the scene. I can’t imagine the reactions of the people in the laundrymat. They must have been horrified.
Qadgop, you don’t support jail time, but what about the child? Should she be returned to her mother?
The laundromats I’ve been in have usually kept the plugs and other electrical thingummies somewhere out of sight precisely so people couldn’t get at them and create a whole new set of hazards (in which case we’d be discussing someone who wasn’t paying attention when their child started fooling with the power cords and got fried). Pulling the plug may well have not been possible.
I might be able to accept that the momma was just playing…but the doors on those models do not lock till you put money in. And it was a front loader. I don’t know what the prices are like there, but here it takes at least 10 quarters to start those bad boys up. If the camera caught her putting the kid in, then it would have to have caught her putting the money in.
And to answer Zette, the machines are often plugged in from behind and then lined up in a row with little or no space in between. Pulling one out enough to reach the cord would be very difficult unless it was the last one in the row.
Perhaps she confused the idea of a washing machine with an automatic dog washing machine?
People say no jail time for stupidity, and I’ve some sympathy for that, but perhaps a sentence for fraud? You know, walking upright and having opposable thumbs presents a certain image, and it could be cirminal fraud to display a certain level of idiocy given that phenotype?
Prison time? I’m not certain. But stupidity which rises to this level has to have some serious consequences, moreso than just the “humiliation” of it. Although it’s not politically correct to say it, some people are just too stupid to be allowed out in public, let alone to have children.
But the thing is - is this a one-time event, or part of a long chain of hazardous idiocy that people in her life just shook their heads at, and hoped for the best? It’s impossible to say from the article.
I’ll hazard that everyone’s done One Really Stupid Thing in their life. One of mine was almost shooting myself in the foot handling a truly hair-triggered .410 shotgun - I brought it up to shoot at a bird (yes, I used to, and no, I don’t and haven’t since I was a farm girl), then changed my mind, lowered the barrel of the gun safely to the ground - with my finger still resting lightly on the trigger. BOOM!, and a divot of earth 12 inches from my left foot went into the air. Not good.
There has to be some sort of punishment for this, but to what level and magnitude it is impossible to speculate accurately on. I don’t know what my punishment should have been, but I’ve never had another close call in 18 years since of shooting, so I must have learned some lesson.
Una
Something about the story strikes me as odd. First, I find it hard to believe that the mother/bystanders couldn’t get the washing machine to open. What if you had to leave mid-cycle and wanted to pull your clothes out early or add clothes after the machine started? Surely someone had a tire iron or SOMETHING that could break that machine.
Secondly, I find it odd that the police chief is quoted as saying, “The child wasn’t drowned yet.” Here in the U.S. we are more likely to say, “The child hadn’t drowned” or “The child wasn’t drowning yet.”
In other words, do we have any confirmation that this story is legit?
So… when does she get to sue the laundrymat?
It appears to be an AP story. I got the same one during a Yahoo search. It seems this is not the first time a thing like this has happened either. It’s happened elsewhere too. 
I suppose it could be argued that there is a reasonable expectation that such equpment be fitted with an emergency stop.
Then you are out of luck. These are front loaders, max capacity. If you were to be able to open it mid-cycle, you’d get much water on the floor.
Are you saying machines be equiped with internal panic buttons? Or are you saying you could see someone saying that?
The former, then you are an idiot, they latter, they are.
No, a way to stop the machine from the outside…not the inside.
Having immediate access to a washing machine mid-cycle might not be something we want to empower the masses with.
I figure we’ll want to proceed in a differences between bathtubs and washing machines direction, perhaps with big bold stickers being involved somewhere.
I was saying no such thing – I envisaged the stop button to be external.
An idiot might suggest that potentially dangerous machinery does not require a method to disengage it, any takers?
The only thing that’s potentially dangerous in this incident is the dumbass mother.
You up for padding the world?
Not specifically related to the OP, but in high school it was quite a sport for some of us to turn off the heat in the big dryers they had in the gym for doing team uniforms and go for a spin. A couple guys even started the “1000 revolution” club.
Once, when I was using a front-loader in a laundromat, I put my money in while the door was open and was about to load it. Somehow I knocked the door closed and it latched and locked. The machine started its cycle before I had put anything in it.
I called the laundromat attendant over, and she had to get keys, unlock a panel on the machine, and reset something to open the door and restart the cycle.
When using a top-loader, I usually start the cycle and have water running into the tub as I’m loading the clothes. I suspect that I put the money in first out of habit when I accidently started the empty front-loader.
It’s possible that a similar thing happended with the woman who locked her child into the washer. If the laundromat was unattended, or the attendant did not know how to unlock the machine and unlatch the door, I could easily see how the child could have been trapped accidentally.