Before you read this, please know that it is a very ugly account of a woman who left her children in the car for hours while she went to get her hair done. They died from hyperthermia. The story is not for the feint of heart, and I’m not sure that the Detroit Free Press had to be so graphic.
I am a non-emotional person, and don’t get shaken very easily, but that story just punched me in the stomach, and I am visibly teary-eyed. I am glad I read it, but at the same time I wish I didn’t…if that makes sense.
On tv news, it sounded like a blurb, but the column just made me ill. I am glad the column was descriptive. It should be.
Also, as hinted at in the column, if these children were pets that died, people and activists would be outraged, yet no one called about the kids.
I’m sorry, but picturing two kids sucking the glass for air is one of the worst images I have ever had to deal with.
People should really have to get tested before they’re allowed to have kids. Simple questions, such as, “Which do you consider more important, your hair, or your kids not dying a horrible agonizing death?” should be fine.
I want to lock HER inside a car. In Death Valley. In midsummer.
Where was this hairdresser’s place? In the middle of nowhere? Why didn’t anyone notice the poor kids and break a window or something? This makes me sick in so many ways…
I have tears in my eyes too and I have an overwhelming urge to hug my children…but I often wonder what is to be gained by further punishing parents who have lost a child through accidental circumstances - even if the circumstances include gross negligence as this one appears to.
It’s not like the next stupid parent to leave their children to suffocate in a car is likely to say - “Oh wait … I could get life imprisonment for this…better not leave them to die”.
Who does it benefit ? Is it to make the rest of us feel better ?
kevlaw, it benefits society to punish them because it reinforces what is and is not acceptable behaivor. Just like every single law and every single punishment reinforces what is and is not acceptable behaivor.
It is to make the rest of us feel better. “Look, we’re not an ignorant, shit-for-brains, piece of cat scat, selfish, motherfucking, numbskulls like this lazy, sorry excuse for a imbecile bitch with her head wedged up her ass.”
Also, it shows that we actually recognize the humanity of the children and the tragedy…they don’t have a voice anymore, so we’re going to act as their voice of grievance when we punish her.
Clearly, she does not know how to handle children. Clearly, she is an absent-minded airhead. But, she is probably not an intentional killer. It is very possible that she did not know that her actions would cause the death of her children. People that ignorant do exist, as I’m sure you’re all well aware. She would not have driven around in that car for 3 hours if she had known ahead of time that her children were going to die.
recursion she’s being charged w/first degree under the Michigan law that allows for that charge when the precipitating act is one of several other criminal acts, including child abuse. (I believe the link and language are in the other thread).
So, even if she didn’t know that leaving the kids in the car in the heat could potentially cause their death, she was in the act of abusing them, and that act caused their death, therefore first degree in the state of MI
Of course if it was murder, then burn the bitch…but if it wasn’t … I can’t think of a worse punishment than losing my children. Certainly not the death penalty. Certainly not life imprisonment.
And if it was an accident (however negligent) then punishing her to make us feel better seems kind of barbaric.
I quite like the idea that she loved her little children and thought they were the light of her life, because it implies tremendous, terrible suffering for her for the rest of her ill-deserved life at what she accomplished with her thoughtlessness.
If she’s really as sociopathic as she seems to be, then she’ll never suffer inside as much as she deserves.
IMHO, anyone who is ignorant enough to do this is a danger to society, and shouldn’t be allowed to roam the streets freely. The scariest part of this is the fact that it was an accident. In fact, I’m surprised her children managed to live that long with such a mother.
Also, she drove around for three hours DIRECTLY after her children died (with them still in the back, nonwithstanding). I tell ya- if it was me, it would be weeks (or even a few hours!) before I could collect myself enough to drive.
Dammit, I didn’t mean “if it was me” b/c it never would be… I mean, if something ever happed to my kids, or anyone’s kids… I simply wouldn’t be able to function that well that soon. I think that alone is quite disturbing.
No, (if you’ll excuse a minor hijack) I think the DFP was correct to include the ugly details. Reading the story you get the implication that there wasn’t much rage over this in Detroit.
Maybe the reporter felt a little rage about this is justified. The barest of facts should suffice, but if not, then let’s know what these kids went through.
But where does it all end? You can’t just let human scum walk the Earth with impunity, free to live their lives, because the very crime which they themselves has committed has somehow “punished” them.
What about a person who kills their kids on purpose. Like the woman who drove her car into the lake and drowned them…Andrea Yates? There were scads of people even then saying “Oh, but she lost all her kids, that’s punishment enough…” :rolleyes: Once you try applying the crime itself as punishment, you are on a slippery slope that leads to an ultra-weird society of no one actually being punished for their crimes, or else the crime itself being a factor which reduces the sentence for committing the crime…
Stupidity is a crime in most jurisdictions, although not directly as such. It ends up being called “negligence”, “manslaughter”, “accidental death and dismemberment”, and (although I’m not certain if this one fits) “depraved indifference”.
The story, the event, and the people are all tragic. Maybe serious time in prison will not only provide a punishment that society can live with, it can also keep a person so negligent that they threw away two lives in this manner out of society.
[nitpick] Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family tub last summer. Susan Smith drove her car into a lake with her two kids strapped in the back.
Yates was psychotic and should have been deemed insane IMO, Smith was just evil.
[/nitpick]
I’ve had my say in the other thread on this, but let me just pop in here to say that I am disgusted by those who would excuse what this woman did, saying she has “suffered enough”. And it’s not just here, it was in my thread too and it’s a relatively common theme in discussions of mothers who kill. Is this what our society has come to? Total lack of personal accountability because everyone’s too fucking timid to enforce that accountability? Do you want to live in a society where behavior like this is encouraged through apathy?
This woman left her children to ROAST TO DEATH. She couldn’t even be bothered to crack a window–something even the sickest bastards will usually do for a dog. She left a three-year-old and an INFANT to wait while she went to tend to her personal vanity.
For god’s sake—she was their mother! Once she chose to have those children her entire purpose for living should have revolved around doing everything in her power to ensure that they reached adulthood healthy, happy, and well-adjusted. She failed miserably–and not through some “accident” either. At some point a decision was made to leave those babies alone, unsupervised, and in mortal danger. She spent three hours being primped and styled, and you really think that in all that time she never once thought about the fact that when she had driven up to the salon, she had had her children in the car? Accident my ass–this was the action of a stupid, selfish, horribly self-centered woman. She brought her children a drawn-out and excruciating death because for some reason she decided it was acceptable to leave them in a BLACK car in 86 degree heat with the fucking windows rolled up in order to avoid the inconvenience taking them with her. Claiming that any mother could make this “mistake” viciously maligns every mother (myself included) who would die before we let our children come to harm.
For once belladonna, I completely agree with you. This is such a terrible thing I won’t even tell my wife about it because she’ll be upset the rest of the day.
If it were up to me (which it isn’t) I would have this woman stuffed in a hot box for hours a day for the rest of her life.
And JonScribe, that paper has got to be a rag. That’s some of the worst news writing I’ve ever seen. A far cry from professional and objective, that. It was written to get everyone’s blood pumping - something that would happen even without the melodromatic vulgarity.