The grieving parents of a 7-year-old child who died hours after being hit by a car were charged with involuntary manslaughter after allowing him and his brother, 10, to walk home unaccompanied by an adult from a nearby grocery store.
At seven I went to school and back home on foot and alone, about a mile, everyday. I did once have a close call with a car that didn’t stop for a crosswalk.
Are parents supposed to accompany their kids at all time until they are 18?
According to 'murica, until 16. Then they can drive their own car.
Seriously though?
No, they’re joking. There’s no federal law governing it afaik- only state laws that vary wildly. Child development experts mostly agree that under 8yo is too young to be unaccompanied
Edit: NC doesn’t have a minimum, and the 7yo was with a 10yo, so it sounds like they have pretty much no case
The article says they were with an adult who was from the grocery store … So they were with an adult… Just not the parents… Unless I’m reading it wrong… I don’t even see anyone else mentioning this
They left their mom at home, and were walking two blocks up the street to meet up with their dad, who was grocery shopping. The dad was on the phone with the older kid at the time, keeping tabs on them while letting them gain confidence going on their own.
As a parent who struggles not to helicopter my kids, none of this sounds out of line to me. The driver who apparently couldn’t react to a kid stepping out unexpectedly, in what sounds like a residential area? I want to know why he’s got a license.
Kind of residential. It was a 4 lane road they were crossing.
We have many places where phone distracted drivers have made it too dangerous for any aged person to walk or ride a bike.
But it’s hyperbole. Kids in cities can get around alone just fine. And my 7 y/o goes to friends houses across a street and the through backyards. We have no sidewalks and fast cars though. So he is extra careful crossing. To the point that he’s basically a crossing guard when we walk together.
It sucks though because there’s nowhere to safely learn to ride a bike that isn’t driving distance from our house.
But it’s hyperbole. Kids in cities can get around alone just fine. And my 7 y/o goes to friends houses across a street and the through backyards.
It it really hyperbole though? Kids in the city are generally murdered by cars more than anything else. And if you have to cut through backyards to avoid death, that’s not really an optimal situation there. Personally I don’t care about trespassing at all, but people could literally shoot kids for this in shithole USA.
No but North Carolina cops will arrest a black parent to avoid having to arrest a white driver.
Yeah 2 miles here. It’s still the rule, school bus service available if you are more than 2 miles away from school OR would have to cross a dangerous road.
And no, obviously we are supposed to be precognitive and able to tell if something will happen.
That said - I would let my kids walk to the shop themselves only if there was no big road to cross. Drivers here will run kids right over. Everyone knows someone with a family member killed by a car.
with a family member killed by a car
Killed by a driver.
Yeah when I was seven my sister and I would travel laying in the backseat of the car, no seatbelts, with four adults in a car legally limited to five occupants, and they would smoke inside (rolled down the windows at least). I’m alive, and so is my sister. That doesn’t mean it was alright and we should keep on doing it.
Parents are supposed to teach their kids to navigate the world and be sure they’ve learned before letting them loose into traffic, which these people didn’t do. Also unloading the responsibility on the older sibling(s) is something that have to stop, a ten years old shouldn’t have to carry that burden, imagine the guilt and trauma of that poor child.
Yeah sure, blame the victims of horrible infrastructure. I walked myself to kindergarden, when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when I was 7, I would walk home from school.
There wasn’t some busy four-lane-road on my way in my rural town. Four fucking lanes? What the hell?
Living in a city, I wasn’t allowed to cross roads by myself when I was seven (some thirty years ago) much less four lane ones. The horrible American infrastructure make it even worse for the parents to let their kids go alone. Was the mother not aware of that road being there?
Better question: Was the old fart not aware there were children under his murder vehicle?
He’s cooperating with the cops apparently, but it sounds like it was a bystander who was checking on the other kid until their parents could get there.
Experts pretty much all agree that kids need some level of autonomy and freedom to grow up healthy. The exact level is under constant debate, and at what age things are appropriate is under constant debate. With freedom and autonomy though will come accidents. It’s an unavoidable consequence. There’s no way to be absolutely certain that a particular kid won’t make a terrible lapse in judgement, no matter how much you’ve drilled something into them. Hell, even adults make those kinds of mistakes all the time.
Put another way, I could keep my kids very safe by keeping them in the house, tethered to an iPad all the time, unable to leave my earshot, like so many parents seem to do now. They’d be super safe. And they’d grow into the kind of inept, stunted kids that people are constantly complaining about.
which these people didn’t do.
According to the cops. jfc.
“In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” police said in a statement.
That’s … beyond callous and (hopefully) has no legal standing, even in the USA.
Let’s fix it:
The “adults” who continue building car-friendly environments that are positively dangerous to pedestrians need to be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment.
So the city, as a group of adults, failed also to ensure a safe environment, should also be arrested.
My thoughts exactly. A “safe environment” really means, “don’t raise your kids in these shit hole, car-centric cities and towns all over America”.
They gotta blame the people who designed the city. If these kids were a small fraction of the same age and in Japan they would be on TV for braving their first solo trip into the market to buy a vegetable for dinner. It would be a cute TV show called “Old Enough” on Netflix with English subtitles instead of a cruel reality on this side of the same planet where a kid is now dead.
That part of it isn’t the fault of the parents, but the fault of the society we have created.
Btw that TV show is a few decades old but my point is that the world is possible. We don’t need to be like Japan was in that TV show, but we do need more walkable cities.
Imagine your kid dies, your other kid being traumatized by watching his brother die, and then being charged with involuntary manslaughter.
I have three kids and this is my nightmare.
I came here to mention Old Enough. So sad that my American kid can never have this kind of experience because of how fucked our cities and society are.
A while back I watched a video about jaywalking. The idea was that, before cars were very common, people would just walk around the street and cars had to go around them. As cars became more common, car owners wanted to get rid of the people on the street, so they invented the term and offense jaywalking. Take something that poor people do (like walking instead of driving) and turn it into an offense.
This is basically the same thing. Make the parents responsible for what was a driver’s fault on a road that shouldn’t have been built the way it was in what must be a residential area - given that the kids just crossed the street from house to store. You have to turn the victim into the perpetrator, because looking at facts makes the wrong people look guilty.
My understanding is it was car lobbyists and PR folks trying to blame pedestrians for fatal car versus pedestrian crashes that invented, spread, and legislated “jay walking.”
“Jay” was slang for hobo/tramp/loser.
there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed.
He hit a pedestrian. If you cannot react to a pedestrian entering the road unexpectedly, especially at a crosswalk, you are, by definition, driving recklessly.
The article says they attempted to cross between the crosswalks. A witness said the younger child jumped into the street. There’s only so much reaction even the most alert driver can do.
Then the speed needs to be reduced.
Fair point, it was indeed between crosswalks. But from the sound of it, the kids had been waiting to cross, and the younger kid jumped out on his own.
The older kid saw the danger, meaning the car should have been able to see at least one kid too. I maintain that if you can’t react safely to kids you can see jumping unexpectedly off the curb as you drive by, you have no business driving.
Without seeing the incident, it’s hard to say whether the driver should have reasonably been able to stop in time. Given what we know, it’s entirely possible that he could not.
The only way I can see the driver not being at fault is if he 1) could not see the kids near the road, and 2) had no reason to expect people might be in blind spots near the road.
Given that there were houses less than 2 blocks from the site of the incident, 2 seems unlikely - this sounds like either a suburban or urban neighborhood (multiple crosswalks within 2 blocks for a 4 lane road). No mention was made of any obstructions, which is not evidence in itself; but it’s the rare four lane road that hasn’t had obstructions cleared from the sides of the road (partly for this reason!), particularly in a non-rural area. At a glance, Gastonia seems to generally keep their roads clear.
I can certainly be convinced otherwise with more evidence, but the burden of vehicle safety absolutely lies on the driver. If you can’t respond fast enough to a seven year old running out in front of you from a place you can’t see; you are, by definition, driving too fast - regardless of the posted speed limit. And if you can see them, and aren’t driving in such a way as to be able to keep them safe should they run in front of you, you’re driving recklessly.
Except not really. It’s a small town and from the article it sounds like the driver is an old person who has lived there for many years. They know what time kids are around, they know where kids usually hang out, and if they have half a brain they’ll drive 15 mph in those areas.
My regular commute takes me near an elementary school, and every morning when I see those kids I drop my speed very low because you never know what they’re going to do. It’s your basic moral responsibility to keep the speed down because you know that small children don’t have the experience and common sense to keep themselves out of the street.
Reasons why this community exists.
You see unaccompanied children, you take your foot off the gas and hover over the brake pedal.
How about parents hold hand of children? Maybe don’t have kids at all if letting free and roaming around.
In civilized countries it’s perfectly normal and safe to let your children walk to the fucking supermarket and back on their own. How indoctrinated with dystopian habits do you have to be to not realize there’s something deeply wrong here?
When you’re operating heavy machinery (like a car) it’s your job to ensure you’re not a danger to your surroundings. If you can’t do that you’re not fit to drive.
Physics says it does not care of civilized countries. U can’t stop a truck like tundra on a dime. Physics. And even with auto braking these day, no way.
like tundra on a dime
Um, wut?
Physics says it does not care of civilized countries
Civilized countries don’t have trucks going through areas where people live. In North America there are far too many “stroads”.
A few things: 1) the speed limit is 45, 2) I went to the street on google maps, you could not hope for better visibility, 3) the driver was 76 years old.
No fucking shot you’re sitting here trying to say that, with great visibility and a speed limit of 45, this old fuck isn’t responsible for killing Legend. No, actually please confirm this, I’ve been feeling pent up and going off on a chud would really make me feel better.
Outside of listing out all things, u did not mention why the parents were not hold on to their kids specially in US. Why?
Also ask the question why a 76 years old is allowed to drive? May be no good public transportation system? Oh no now we let senile folks drive. And also how easy is it to get license here in US, my cat might legally drive
What you’re advocating for is actually detrimental to kids development. Kids need increasing levels of independence in order to learn how to interact with the world and ultimately become better adjusted adults
It doesn’t matter where I’m from, you are supposed to be able to stop
45mph speed limit. No way u will stop in a dime.
Probably too high of a limit then
Double lane. Normal everywhere. We will be seeing stories like this everyday.
Also trucks these days are big. You can’t even see people 5 ft in front of the full size truck And I have a tundra. It’s massive
Only normal in America
Sounds like trucks shouldn’t be so big and should prioritize visibility then
If I’m driving in an area where pedestrians can be present and my view of a walkway is obstructed, I slow down. A speed limit isn’t an obligation nor is it a right to travel at speeds that have the potential to be unsafe. I treat every blind spot as if there’s something behind it ready to jump out at a moment’s notice and I adjust my speed to anticipate it. I do that because I believe operating within legally defined parameters doesn’t exempt me from the responsibility of my actions causing harm to another person.
We as a society are far too lenient toward drivers who take for granted the fact that they’re in control of high-velocity heavy-machinery that can and do kill people on a daily basis. Traffic deaths aren’t an inevitability, in most cases they’re caused by overconfidence.
Yep. U got this right. People here are just dumb. Kid jumps in from of the car that is going 45mph. Parents should be holding hand and not letting kids just do what the kids want to do.
Is there dash cam? We are all just doing guess work at the moment.
Oh, so you think we shouldnt have designated places and tools for murdering children?
Why do you hate america and freedom?
That would mean every driver on the highway is driving recklessly.
“yes! Now you see how carbrained society is”
counterpoint: society is to blame, not individual drivers.
Nah, highways tend have lots of visibility around them, you can see a person a long ways off. Though, if you do see a kid on the side (and don’t intend to stop), you should absolutely be slowing down and giving them a wide berth!
The 76-year-old driver will not face any charges.
TBF, the child ran onto the road (a typical US road that encourages drivers to drive fast and be oblivious of pedestrians, I guess), and - according to the police - the driver was neither speeding nor under the influence and is “cooperative”.
But to charge the parents with involuntary manslaughter for letting their children walk 2 blocks is madness, and makes me question the police department’s objectivity, to put it mildly.
My guess is at the very least the driver’s reaction and/or eyesight was impaired due to old age.
You see children next to the road, you slow down. You are the adult operating the deadly machine. You have a duty to be extra careful around kids.
Where I live, if a kid jumps in front of your car, even if there is no crossing and you had no visibility, you still have the majority of the fault. The truth is you are the one driving a killing machine, and if you are going at a speed where you can’t ensure, with your currect visibility and road conditions, that an accident won’t happen, it’s you who is at fault.
Of course that’s different on highways and speedways, where the one crossing would be found at fault. But for all residential areas, drivers need to be careful about pedestrians crossing the road, and especially kids who are unpredictable.
So much this!
the police department’s objectivity,
Also the prosecutor’s office, who charges people with crimes.
the child ran onto the road … according to the police
You gotta be a child to believe the police.
makes me question the police department’s objectivity, to put it mildly.
Ofc cops lie about everything.
On top of what everyone else has said, my stance in general is that anyone who harms another with their car should have their license revoked for at least 5 years if they were at all at fault, which this man certainly was being the driver hitting a pedestrian. On top of that, he’s at the age where he should probably stop driving anyway. While I don’t exactly believe this warrants jail time, especially if the driver has been as cooperative as they are saying, I do think he needs to be charged with something just to get him off the road for the foreseeable future. Outside of that though I do agree with you.
if they were at all at fault
The driver is always at fault. They’re choosing to use a deadly machine in public. It’s their responsibility not to kill people.
That clause was intended specifically for vehicle on vehicle incidents, I agree that if a vehicle hits a pedestrian they are always at fault.
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This doesn’t serve justice, in any way.
Why were the children trying to walk between crosswalks? I’d bet because the only crosswalks anywhere in the area are at stoplights and way too far apart. A painted cross wall at minimum, or a HAWK light that stops vehicle traffic should have been there. But those are too expensive until multiple people are killed by traffic, it takes a lot of blood to get human-cebtric infrastructure installed in this country.
The crosswalk directly leading to the middle school near me was known by the school and the neighborhood to be dangerous due to traffic speed, and the community had been fighting for a HAWK light to be installed by the county for nearly a decade. They even widened and replaced the road during that time and still refused to install it (although they did install the underground conduit necessary when doing the roadwork). It took 4 children total being killed by vehicles outside of school hours before they finally agreed to install a HAWK light there.
Charging the parents doesn’t do any public good. I doubt they’re going to find a full jury that could convict unless there’s some underlying information about the parents trying to kill the kids or some shit like that. I can’t imagine a jury of 12 would unanimously convict.l based on the info provided.
Pedestrian crossings are potentially miles apart, but it’s illegal not to use them? Makes sense…
Laws that are almost impossible to follow are great for keeping prisons full
You’re assuming they’ll get a trial and won’t simply be held in jail until they accept a plea deal.
Edit: for those unaware of Yankee justice 90-95% of all criminal cases are resolved via plea deals
What??? In Switzerland we walked to school by ourselves at age of 4.
Same here in Germany. Imagine getting killed right around the corner.
And then the parents getting blamed instead of driver??
Victim blaming is basically the rule here.
They’ve written vague laws about leaving children unaccompanied unreasonably. If you leave your 13 year old alone for a week then that’s child abuse probably. So this is the outcome of those laws.
I did in America too.
Sounds like evil inception, first the nightmare of losing your child and then the nightmare of possibly losing your job and house etc. I hope they at least don’t have to go through the nightmare of prison (which they would likely have to go through alone, since there is no couples-prison). Evil evil evil
Ends with career in plumbing
Gastonia police declined to comment to NBC News, but said in a statement that “there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed. The driver continues to be cooperative and the incident remains under active investigation by the Gastonia Police Department’s Traffic Division.”
Fucking insane. Ancient driver must be good, we must blame someone. How about the folks? They seem to be having a good run!
During my driving lessons in Germany i learned that you always have to slow down around kids. Kids are unpredictable. Kids do not pay attention all the time. Kids struggle with estimating distances and speeds of cars coming your way.
Unless the case is something like “Kids jumped from a bridge right in front of your car.” There is no way that the driver couldn’t have done something to prevent the accident or at least form it being a fatal accident.
Indeed. Even so much as, if you have small kids neighbours, check under the car before moving it.
If you read the story it sounds like the 7 year old just walked out into the street. So he literally could have walked right in front of the guy. The dad was on the phone with the older son which might have ment he wasn’t paying attention to the younger brother b
If you
readbelieve the storyGive me an effing break.
If the driver wasn’t able to respond in time to a pedestrian entering the street, particularly at a crosswalk, he was driving recklessly.
(Edit) Not a crosswalk, between two crosswalks. I maintain that inability to react to pedestrians safely in an area at least near housing constitutes reckless driving.
Fair, on a re-read, 7 and 10 are way too young to be left alone.
I certainly did not absorb it all.
They were going from their house where their mom was 2 blocks up the street to where their dad was shopping. The dad was on the phone with the older kid as they walked. They were not left alone.
In a place with non-negligent zoning and street design, they’d be plenty old enough to walk to a nearby store safely.
I’m SO mad at this story. There is no reason to charge the parents. As others have stated, helicoptering kiddos is detrimental, and they need to be allowed to roam their environment – That can come at the cost of danger, but we cannot be expected to grow with 0 risk.
Sure, as a parent, you can state: ‘don’t go there’, and ‘always look both ways’, but kids are kids and there’s only so much you can enforce without being overbearing. In this scenario, without video evidence, there’s no clear conclusion about fault for either the driver or the child.
I’m okay with letting the driver off (criminally, let insurance pay the family but don’t put the driver in jail) and acknowledging this as an accidental death, especially since he stuck around and is complying. Charging the parents for negligence, though, is just fucking brutal when they are suffering the loss of a child, not to mention the impact on the older son, who probably is feeling an unreasonable amount unreasonable of guilt: “I could have held his hand; I could have reminded him of the road…” (not his quotes, my presumed internal dialog). Again, as others have stated, this is a city planning problem, not a parental one: If there was a way to walk to a grocery store that didn’t cross a 4-lane road, that’d be a better option, but there are plenty of places where that is not possible.
These parents do NOT need the extra burden of being held legally liable for an accident and anyone blaming them for this without knowing them personally and being able to describe other aspects of their parent as negligent is just an asshole.
it’s ghoulish.
They got it backwards. I will hold the road planners, the city government, the driving license issuer, and the driver responsible. It start with poorly designed roads and ends with poor driver training. The parents are the victims here.
It’s the parents fault for birthing a child into this hellscape into the first place. We’ve built this inherently violent landscape and your letting your spawns roam free? /s
but they want people to have more kids. lolwtf
If you watch the video in THIS report, it’s clear that planners should bare some responsibility here.
They designed no logical, safe crossing where people need to cross. Even during the report, you can see other pedestrians walking across.
The only “sidewalk” is a tiny strip on only one side, and it’s right against the curb. You might as well be walking in a shoulder!
And the speed in an area like that is too damn fast.
That road was designed to be anti-pedestrian. Not the parent’s fault.
Speaking of planners, i follow
on Mastodon (a transportation expert who cycles and cycles with her kid) and she put me onto this book
https://bookwyrm.social/book/1907724/s/killed-by-a-traffic-engineer
This some serious bullshit not even the cops can’t be that heartless … Oh wait the parents are black … in North Carolina …
Racism explains a lot of court decisions in the US. Jim Crow laws never truly went away.
Also, there are designated child culling zones.
USA is the premiere shithole country.
edit: It’s kind of amazing how many people in here take NBC quoting cops as fact. The cops’ tale is obviously bullshit as usual. They’re just reciting whatever the old man said. Ofc he thinks the kid just jumped in front of him. The old coot probably had no idea what was even happening: “I was just driving along when this colored boy jumped under my truck…” Cops are like, “Yes, sir, we understand. It happens all the time. Best we can do is lock up the parents.” —> NBC.
edit2: Seriously tho, I feel bad for the driver too. This is a good example of how car dependency is not good for the elderly. Let’s get that driver out of a car and onto a train. Ok I gotta get on with my life…
Ahhhh, that makes sense now: the child was black.
Gotta get those black people in prison and give them records.
Can we start labeling if something is US. Cause this feels very US. Have you guys tried sidewalks?
No they needes to add that one more lane in to fix traffic. Turns out it didnt work but maybe 1 more.
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lol
