Am I the only one who feels for the poor mother who was arrested when her 3-year-old was found wandering outside of a hotel down the street from their home in the middle of the night? Listen to the details. I promise you'll get one of those that could have been my kid shivers.
The 22-year-old mom wasn't drunk. She wasn't on drugs. She hadn't left her child home alone. She was sleeping. Sleeping, in the middle of the night! Imagine that! (Like most moms, you probably can't, but you might at least have a faint recollection of the fact that sleeping is not usually considered a crime, not before you have kids anyway.) Samantha Boyd was sleeping when her 3-year-old son simply woke up, opened the front door, and walked out of the house. Shivering yet?
Thankfully, the little boy only got as far as a hotel down the street when a bartender looked outside, noticed him, and of course, called the cops. Shortly thereafter, Boyd woke up, saw her son was gone, freaked out, and called the cops herself. That's when they arrested her. Huh??
Okay, I'm trying to see this from the side of the law enforcement officials, I really am, and I understand that they see abused, neglected kids all the time and that it's better to be safe than sorry. Perhaps procedure dictated that Boyd had to be arrested. But I can't stop imagining what it must have been like for her to wake up and realize, through a groggy haze, that her son was missing. Did they tell her he was okay before they arrested her? Did she know where he was, or who was taking care of him while they put her in cuffs?
It's likely that the only mistake Boyd made that night was forgetting to deadbolt the door, though in my experience, a 3-year-old can be shockingly adept at working locks, so maybe she didn't even "slip up" at all. I just hope that when Boyd goes to court in a couple of weeks to face charges of child endangerment that the judge has the same reaction I did: That could have been my kid.
Do you think Boyd is guilty of any crime?
Image via Nicolaitan/Flickr
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Comments 142
I don't have a problem with her being investigated by CPS to make sure that there isn't any other problem there. But it says she's being charged. That's absurd.
No. The poor woman went through enough! It was a mistake that anybody could have made.
This totally could have been my middle when he was less than 2 years old. It was terrifying to think of him constantly leaving. We had a chain on the door and it was always on, but I was still paranoid that maybe it wasnt locked. kids can be so unpredictable. Being a parent... is HARD.
The article linked to this one is a joke. The quote from the police officer who found the boy goes:
"We arrested her for endangering the welfare of the child just by the fact that the child did get out and what's nice about that is that it will be put into the system and she will have a county welfare worker assigned to just keep an eye on him, make sure it was just an accidental thing as opposed to something that might be more, happen more often"
The system isn't "nice", and instead of wasting money on this case, which obviously doesn't even need to be one, why not investigate real cases of child endangerment and abuse? And if he keeps slipping out in the middle of the night, even if the door is locked, how is that Mom's fault? The kid's two years old. Kinda hard to explain to a two-year-old why it's not a good idea to go wandering around town in the middle of the night. And if she does lock him in his room to prevent it from happening, she'll be taken in for child abuse. Does anyone else find this to be a cruel paradox?
No..she should not have been arrested.