Absent Minded . . . or Murder? Only a mother knows.

[The_RANDy_Corporation]

I'm suspicious. How 'bout you?
**********
Mar 22, 2001 - 09:20 AM

Baby Dies in Car After Mother Says She Forgot Him
The Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) - A 5-month-old baby died in his car seat while his mother was at work at a nearby restaurant. The distraught woman told authorities she must have forgotten to drop him off at day care.

An autopsy was pending to determine the exact cause of Ethan Fletcher's death Wednesday. Temperatures in Dallas reached 73 degrees and officials said that the temperature in a closed car could easily build up to nearly 100.

Witnesses described hearing screams from the woman when she returned to the car Wednesday afternoon. She told police she had recalled dropping the boy off at day care before going to work.

"It's a tragic example of how quickly these things can happen," police Deputy Chief Alfredo Saldana said. "It's a violation of the law to leave your child unattended for even five minutes."

The 24-year-old Plano woman, whose name was not released, [why not?]was questioned by police and released, but could later face charges of criminally negligent homicide. After the medical examiner determines the cause of death, the case will be forwarded to the district attorney's office, Saldana said.

The mother arrived for work at about 10 a.m. The child's body was discovered at about 3 p.m.

"I heard these two bloodcurdling screams and ran over to see what the problem was," witness Tony Fraga said. "I saw the baby in the car and tried to help."

The child's grandmother told The Dallas Morning News her daughter, a single mother, was devastated on the loss of her only child.

"This baby was everything to her," the grandmother said. "She will never be the same. She loved this baby so much." [b][yeah, the baby will never be the same either. Sounds suspiciously like a retroactive abortion to me.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAA4ZSKMKC.html

[Venus]

Here's my take, for what it's worth: Mom let the locked car be her babysitter because as a single mom working as a waitress, she couldn't afford anymore babysitting expenses. It got hot, hotter than she knew (although, the fact that she lives in TX might be her first clue it would or could become warm) it would be in the car, and the child cooked. A single mom working as a waitress probably doesn't think that many steps ahead and did whatever was expedient for the moment, so she left her child in the car so she could work. It's too bad her mother hadn't been available to babysit for her, and it's too bad she chose to get pregnant with a child she couldn't afford to raise on her own, which I suspect is the case here. She may have a history of poor judgment. I think the story about forgetting to drop him off at the daycare is a fairy tale devised to avoid an admission that she made an overt decision to leave the child unattended in the oven....er, I mean 'car'. She probably had to borrow a pot holder from her employer to get the child out.

I think it's safe to say that this mom definitely needed a tax cut, sooner rather than later. Had she more of her own earnings available to her, this tragedy may well have been avoided.

I suspect her name was not released because she's possibly a TX Latina (although child's last name is 'Fletcher'), and the deputy police chief doling out the story to good ol' AP is apparently a Latino (Saldana).

[ 03-22-2001: Message edited by: Venus ]

[The_RANDy_Corporation]

Very plausible, Venus.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I pay my taxes, they have always been taken out by Employers, I don't cheat and have no way to cheat. If I was that good, I would work as a Government Accountant and get some real money.

All of that having been said, a "Tax Cut?"

World War One was a son of a bitch, but I refuse to believe it was so bad we're still paying it off.

I'm so sick of this. Why no push to eliminate tax on your labor? What gives them the right, besides a law that was put in place to pay off a war debt, to tax us to death?

Just an interesting sidebar discussion...

As far as this case is concerned. Some people are airheads and we can't look for a Susan Smith in every case...maybe she was just stupid. Really stupid and careless...

I don't know that prison is proper. I don't know. My heart aches for both of them.

My heart aches for the child, of course. What a horrible way to die...and she has to live with that, for the rest of her life.

Then I think of the Lawyers, Judges and Parole Boards who get people off or release them so they can rape children that age and kill them...

And I am left scratching my head as to why the outcry comes up to lock someone up for this...

In one case, we have stupidity. Prison does not usually cure stupidity.

In the case of Government, we have malice...

[Venus]

Yes, malice. In the case of government, malice aforethought. Way, way, way aforethought. Years aforethought.


If my guess about this case is correct, it won't do any good to lock mom up. It won't make her any smarter or better prepared if she ever has another child. Her remorse is her sentence for her stupidity, but there would be no intent to kill in such a case. Criminal negligence? Maybe. Maybe tying her tubes would help, but that's not a choice for us to make, in my opinion. Maybe she'll see the big picture behind what happened and wait to have her next child within a marriage and under the necessary financial condition. We can hope.

It's very sad, whatever the cause. If it was a lack of funds that caused that child to be left in the car, its little face would serve well as the poster child for abolishment of the Sixteenth Amendment.

Of course, this is all just speculation, as it pertains to this case. But, if this isn't what happened in this case, it could happen, or may have at another time, elsewhere with some other over-burdened little family.