This sounds totally crazy to me. I walked half a mile alone to school from first grade to high school almost every day.
Seems crazy, but… as far as I can tell we only get the mom’s side of the story and the article is written by the “president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement.”
So maybe it’s not the most reliable source.
The word “making” in the headline jumps out at me a bit. I would’ve expected “letting.” “Making” feels more active and makes me more inclined to think there’s something else to it.
(That and the source.)
I walked 10 miles each day, in the snow, uphill both ways. We lived in Eschertown, NY.
Also, the timeline here is all skewed. First it says it’s in the afternoon and the cops showed up 15 minutes after they got home. Then it says the cops showed up at 8:30 PM and were there for 3 hours. Then it says she got to jail at 4 in the morning.
So another headline might be “Mom kicks son out of car and makes him walk home in the dark.”
Edit: And apparently, the neighbor was able to call the cops, have the cops show up and pick up the kid all within a 10-15 minute walk?
Google can’t seem to find anything about this except for the link on the OP and a GoFundMe ostensibly set up by the woman’s brother.
ETA: turned up a summary of what appears to be the arrest report:
2021-1772-C2 HEATHER WALLACE 12/02/2021 ENDANGERING A CHILD
I believe the police arrived in late afternoon, around 5:30, and three hours after that, at 8:30, the police car drove away from the home with the mother inside. The mother said she was booked at 4:00 am, which is a separate event from being locked up. This all happened at least 6 months ago, so it was still light when the boy was walking home.
The point of the story seems to be that, even though CPS standards have recently been eased legislatively, the criminal code has not. So although CPS dismissed the complaint after 2 weeks of investigation, the criminal charge was still on the books. This seems like excess zeal on the part of both the police and the DA. Also poor legal advice for the mother, who agreed to plead guilty in return for community service. But she has lost her ability to work with children, which was her profession. If there is another side to the story, it would be interesting to hear it.
I’d like to add that at the age of 7 I started traveling alone on buses across town to get allergy shots from our family doctor, twice a week. But that was in 1956, so not comparable.
Man - if this is anywhere NEAR true, it is horrendous.
My eldest has 2 kids - aged 2 and 7. She routinely has her 7 yr old walk places by herself - such at to friends’ houses, even if she needs to cross quiet suburban streets. The kid WANTS to walk/bike to school alone, but the only reason my str doesn’t let her is the street nearest the school (probably 1/2 mile away) is somewhat busy and there is no crossing guard.
I remember when my str - I think in 3d grade - was in an after school activity. They called and wouldn’t let her walk home alone (Maybe 1/2 mile, or a little less). We said it was OK - we’d send her brother to pick her up, and they were fine with that. We didn’t mention that her brother was in 1st grade! 
It is crazy- and I doubt it’s exactly true. It doesn’t appear that anyone was spoken to except the mother- not the police, not the judge , not the prosecutor. No one, not even the mother’s attorney. There aren’t any articles other than the one linked to in the OP - one would think that if it really occurred the way it was described, local news would have covered it. She had to plead guilty to get pre-trial diversion - but if the conviction is still on her record, where is the diversion? None of it makes sense - the kid has often walked home before but the busybody neighbor a block away didn’t recognize him. She calls the police who bring the kid home - but somehow she let the kid keep walking and the police got there quickly enough that he had made it to his own block but not into the house.
And all of that assumes that it’s not just plain crazy to think that someone would be arrested and advised by their attorney to plead guilty in those circumstances - somehow, the police have probable cause to arrest her and her lawyer tells her to plead guilty without even a reduction in the charge but CPS doesn’t fine enough evidence of abuse or neglect to substantiate the case? It’s typically the other way around - CPS substantiates but the police don’t have enough for an arrest. And the Go Fund Me then gets set up a year later?
Either
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It happened very differently and the writer was biased in that she just believed what she was told by this woman without any independent research
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None of it happened and they just want money. They’ve gotten $4000
ETA - just saw the post with the listing of indictments. Something happened but I doubt it went exactly as the mother claims.
McClennan county appears to be pretty strongly Republican and the DA, Barry Johnson, is a Republican. I would assume that most of the police are Republicans as well.
In general, I’d say that the story sounds pretty questionable.
The one thing that gives it plausibility is that there’s only the one charge, child endangerment. Usually, I would expect an additional charge like “driving while intoxicated”.
Probably my follow-up would be to check if this wasn’t her first time getting into trouble like this.
The article just came out today. So I would expect it would take a day or two for the local media to investigate it and write articles.
I think most people here consider Reason to be a questionable news source (as I do)–but this seems so very specific/easily checked that I posted it.
PS I came across the article in Hacker News where there are several hundred posts:
I’d think it would depend a whole lot on what the area’s like that the child walks through.
New York State law re school busing requirements:
Education Law requires that non-city school districts provide transportation for all children in grades K-8 who live more than two miles from the school they legally attend and for all children in grades 9-12 who live more than three miles from the school they legally attend, up to a distance of 15 miles. While city school districts are not required to furnish transportation, except for pupils with disabilities, city districts which choose to do so must provide transportation on an equitable basis and within similar mileage limits to children attending both public and nonpublic schools. Transportation for a distance of less than two miles for children in grades K-8 or of less than three miles for children in grades 9-12 and for a distance greater than 15 miles may be provided by the district
I think most districts here do bus children who live closer to the school than those distances – but I don’t think they bus children who live within half a mile. – there was a story in relatively local news lately about parents complaining that the district was enforcing transportation limits of 1.5 miles on several families whose children lived between 1.4 miles and 1.5 miles away and had been bused the previous year – ah, found it, that’s grade 6 and up. But the distance for students in grades 1 through 5 is 0.9 miles; well over half a mile. And that’s a city district, though it’s a small city.
That doesn’t guarantee that somebody in some other state might not think it’s child endangerment for a child to walk half or less of the distance routinely required by school districts in NY. (Some parents may drive the kids, but at least some of them are going to walk, and nobody seems to be calling CPS on the schools.) But the story as given does seem pretty strange.
If I’m in the closest village when school lets out I routinely see children walking all through the village, some of them clearly more than half a mile from the school. That’s small town, but the story reads as if the location isn’t any more dangerous.
Yes, the article on Reason was published today - but the incident happened in October of 2021. I find it odd that the mother didn’t go to the local media then or else they didn’t cover it at all - which doesn’t make sense unless they didn’t write about it because her story didn’t check out.
Okay, I took a deep dive on the author. Most of the articles are basically the same “kids should be allowed to wandering around without their parents” which on it’s own seems fine.
But… there’s a handful of articles that are all basically “sex offender laws are too strict” and also “I should be able to watch stranger’s kids playing at the park without being harassed” which sets off my “This guy is a true crime podcast in the making” alarm.
I get a server error - what does it say?
That’s the grand jury indictment a month and a half after her arrest (the docket posted by @Sage_Rat notes she posted bond back in October). While the old line about a skilled prosecutor can get the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich may perhaps be true, it does sound somewhat odd that a group of Waco citizens agreed to indict her just on the facts given.
Criminal Record Detail: Cause Number: 2021-1772-C2
| Cause Number | 2021-1772-C2 |
|---|---|
| Style 1 | THE STATE OF TEXAS |
| Style 2 | WALLACE,HEATHER |
| Filed Date | 12/2/2021 |
Events
10/11/2022 MOTION & ORDER TO DISMISS
04/07/2022 RESET FORM
12/09/2021 RESET FORM
12/09/2021 LTR NOTIFYING OF ARRAIGNMENT DATE
12/09/2021 APPEARANCE OF COUNSEL
12/09/2021 WAIVER OF ARRAIGNMENT
12/09/2021 E-FILE INFORMATION SHEET (APPEARANCE OF COUNSEL)
12/08/2021 APPEARANCE OF COUNSEL
12/06/2021 LTR NOTIFYING OF ARRAIGNMENT DATE
12/03/2021 BAIL BOND IN THE SUM OF $3000 ( PLAYER BAIUL BONDS/ALLEGHENY CASUALTY COMPANY)10/20/21 MRB
12/03/2021 NOTICE OF INDICTMENT CERTIFICATE
12/02/2021 INDICTMENT
There are no previous criminal records with her name.
I see a civil proceeding that might be related:
https://mclennan.edoctec.com/McLennanDCWeb/CivilCourtDetail.aspx?id=302876
Patricia Garcia vs Heather Wallace
That shows that there was a case, and the other document shows that she was charged with endangering a child but it doesn’t recite the allegations - she says the kid walked half a mile home on a street with no traffic but we can’t say she was indicted based on the facts in the Reason article. There is also no mention of a plea to a felony, but there was an order to dismiss which typically means that there is no conviction.