What kind of society are we creating where the state can lock up a mother because her child was struck and killed by a hit and run driver, who most likely was drunk? Read the story and watch the video.
From Yahoo News:
A Marietta, Ga., mom who was convicted of jaywalking after her 4-year-old son was run over and killed in a hit-and-run said on the Today Show that the worst part of going to jail would be the separation from her two remaining kids.
Raquel Nelson was convicted of homicide by vehicle and reckless conduct by a jury and faces sentencing tomorrow. She can receive up to a three-year jail sentence, six times the stretch that Jerry Guy--who admitted to drinking before running over Nelson's son, A.J.--served.
"I think to come after me so much harder than they did him is a slap in the face because this will never end for me," she said. "It's three years away from the two that I have left."
Nelson also said that the jury had "never been in my shoes," because each of them answered that they had never taken public transportation before. Nelson, who doesn't have a car, was three-tenths of a mile away from the nearest crosswalk when her bus dropped her off at the stop across the street from her apartment with her three children. She decided to cross with her kids rather than remain outside any later at night, she said. (You can read more about her case here.)
"We are just hoping as a family that [the judge] is compassionate and lets my niece remain with her other children," Nelson's aunt Loretta Williams said. Nearly 75,000 have signed an online petition in support of Nelson.
Click on this link to view the video:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/261495/nbc-today-show-mom-could-face-jail-after-son-dies-jaywalking-
I for one am sick and tired of reading where parents or grandparents are being punished by cities and states for crimes resulting from what we used to call tragedies and accidents.
In Laredo for instance, we have seen a mother arrested for child abandonment when a 12 year old boy who wandered away from her in the parking lot at the mall. We have seen a grandmother arrested for child abandonment when her 3 year old grandchild got out of the house and walked down the street. A person who saw the child called the police and when the officer arrived he put the child in the police car. The grandmother who had been searching for the child, went to the officer, where she was going to ask for help in finding the kid, and she was arrested. There are many more such incidents.
In this case, how can the state prove that if the mom had gone to the proper crosswalk that the drunk driver would not have run over the child. Idiotic.
Why are we doing this? Have we as a country gone crazy in thinking that accidents cannot happen? Is the court system to be used for everything? I wonder if I had grown up in this type of environment how many times my mom could have been arrested for my actions as a little kid.
And finally, what purpose does it serve the community for this mother to be locked up? Who will take care of her other kids? Has her family not suffered enough because of the death of her son. What punishment can make that worse? Is the tragedy not enough of an example for the community to make parents think and do what they can to prevent such things from happening.
Let's fix these stupid laws. Let's return to common sense and remember that accidents happen.
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