Editorial: Kids, cars: cases raise awareness

Thursday, June 19, 2003 | 8:48 a.m.

District Attorney David Roger faced a difficult decision in the three separate cases of parents who left their small children unattended in cars. Within the past week he pressed gross misdemeanor charges of child endangerment against two parents whose children were not hurt and decided against charging a parent whose child died. For Roger, the issue centered on intent.

In one case, a woman left her 16-month-old son alone on June 3 while checking to see if a store was open. In the brief time she was away, her car was stolen. The car was recovered hours later and her son was unharmed. In the second case, on June 6, a father left his 2-year-old son unattended while spending a few minutes getting coffee. Roger decided that both the woman and the man should face gross misdemeanor charges of child endangerment. In the third case, a man drove to work on June 5 and left his 7-month-old son in the back of his van for more than eight hours. He told police that because his morning routine had varied he forgot his son was in the van. In this incident, the child died. Roger, however, found that the father did not intentionally leave his son in the van. The other two parents, he said, intentionally left their children unattended.

If the two gross misdemeanor cases go to trial, a jury will likely be asked to decide whom the state's endangerment law applies to. Does it apply only to people who give alcohol to minors or lock children in closets as punishment? Or does the law apply as well to people who had no intention of harming children but intentionally, if thoughtlessly, exposed them to danger? We believe some leniency should be granted to those charged under the latter circumstance, at least on the first offense.

This would be consistent with Roger's larger theme of intent. The father of the child who died said he had no intention of leaving the child in the van. The case was a tragedy, not a crime. Roger was correct to not charge the man. And, by all accounts so far, the parents of the two children who were left unattended had no intention of harming their children.

Meanwhile, we trust that all parents are now getting the message that leaving a small child alone in a car, even if only for a few minutes, is possibly illegal and definitely a terrible risk to the child's life.