The Scoop: Forgetting kids a puzzling trend
I’m at a loss to understand how people can completely forget about their children and leave them to die in scorching heat inside their car. I’m not talking about an isolated incident. It’s already happened twice this week – including once in Nashville.
Over the last two days, most of us have probably heard about the Nashville tragedy. A 31-year-old mother, and co-owner of a day care, Zenobia Newell Gordon, left her 22-month-old son in the backseat of her personal van when going to work Wednesday morning. The child was discovered at about 4 p.m. by a parent who had come to pick up her own child from the day care.
What makes this case even more unbelievable is the fact Gordon drove the van to work at about 9 a.m. – and she was not alone. In addition to her 22-month-old, the van contained Gordon’s two daughters, ages 4 and 7, and a niece. All four went inside the day care leaving the toddler to die.
If this sounds all too familiar, it is. Two brothers, ages 3 and 5, died earlier this week in California when they were left inside an SUV for five hours. Their mother also operates a day care center.
And continuing the familiar refrain, a 2-year-old girl died in Memphis last month after being left all day in a day care van.
I can’t understand why people have suddenly, over the last seven or eight years, developed a strange syndrome where they can’t remember their kids are in the car. You never used to hear about this type of behavior.
The first big case I’m sure most of us are familiar with is that of Jennie Bain Ducker, a Warren County woman who left her two kids inside her car in June of 1995. Ducker’s case is somewhat different than all the recent tragedies because Ducker intended to leave the children, ages 1 and 23 months, inside the car while visiting friends at the Holiday Inn Express. Ducker, however, didn’t intend to leave them there for eight hours, but she fell asleep.
The media blitz that hit McMinnville when word of that tragedy spread can probably only be matched by the number of reporters who came here following the mysterious fumes at the high school. In addition to the Nashville TV stations, CNN and the London-based British Broadcasting Corp. reported on the deaths of Devin and Dustin Ducker. The Associated Press said it distributed the story on state, national and international wires.
Police chief Dickie Kesey said at the time, “I can’t remember anything getting this much attention since I’ve been in office.”
Ducker was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and there was outrage throughout the community. One man even wrote the Standard in a letter to the editor (which wasn’t published) that he thought Ducker should be locked in a hot car and left to die as punishment for her crime.
Ducker was ultimately convicted of aggravated child abuse and received an 18-year sentence. She is still in prison today.
State and national lawmakers need to take a long, hard look at actions they can take to prevent children from being forgotten in cars. You would think people would have enough sense to remember a small child on their own, but we’ve painfully learned that is not the case.
One solution would be to require automakers to provide built-in child seats on every new car. When the car is stopped and the driver gets out, an alarm would sound until the child safety seat is unbuckled. This is similar to the feature on most cars today where an alarm sounds if you turn off your engine and try to get out of the car with the lights on.
The burden shouldn’t fall on automakers. It would be nice to believe American adults are responsible enough to remember they have a child in the car. But week after week, we are reminded that’s not the case.
(James Clark is editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)