Unattended Va Toddler dies in car
 

By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 10, 2008; Page B01

A consulting company manager left his newly adopted son sitting in a sport-utility vehicle in a Herndon parking lot for much of the day Tuesday, killing the 21-month-old child, police said yesterday.

The boy, Chase, was adopted three months ago from Russia, police said.

Miles Harrison, 49, of Purcellville was charged yesterday with manslaughter. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Dave Zorger, owner of Herndon-based Project Solutions Group, where Harrison is managing director, said someone went to the front desk at the end of the day Tuesday and told the receptionists about seeing something in a GMC Yukon with tinted windows parked outside.

"They said, 'Hey, Miles, is there something in your car?' and he went running outside," Zorger said.



Herndon Police Chief Toussaint E. Summers Jr. said Harrison was supposed to take Chase to day care. Instead, Harrison drove to work, and Chase sat in the SUV outside the building, in the 500 block of Herndon Parkway, for "at least several hours," Summers said. Exactly how long remains unclear. The high temperature Tuesday was about 90 degrees.

Zorger said Harrison arrived at work at the real estate consulting firm "sometime in the morning," and police said they received an emergency call about 5 p.m. that someone was performing CPR on an unresponsive child.

Summers said authorities think the manslaughter charge is appropriate. The investigation is continuing, he said.

"You can't leave a kid unattended," he said.

Summers would not say what investigators think happened. "Manslaughter is simply the unlawful killing without malice," Summers said. "It's really hard to know what was going on in Miles Harrison's mind at that point."

Zorger said he did not know whether some distraction might have contributed to the boy's death.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...=moreheadlines



Sad and tragic...soemthing we hear every summer.

Yeah..one of my friends left a puppy in a hot car a few years ago for an hour. Forgot the puppy was in there and she was running errands. She remembered and ran to the car. Found the puppy panting for air and looking like it was about to pass out. The adorable puppy is now a full grown HUGE pit bull.

I imagine leaving a CHILD in a hot car for HOURS is much much much worse.

That's so sad.

I hate to say that this is happening more often than people think. We just had a boy die after he was left in a SUV for hours in Portsmouth. Not to mention the two toddlers that died when they climbed in a neighbors car while playing (I believe it was in NC). How do you forget you have kids in your car?

As for leaving dogs in a car, that drives me insane when I see it in the summer. As if cracking the windows actually does something to relieve the intense heat.

Not really newsworthy.

It is newsworthy because it happens frequently. SO many parents leave kids in the car unattended while in the supermarket, bank, post office, etc. intentionaly! Now some people are so focused on work and talking on their cell phones that they're even forgetting they have the kids with them in the first place. Stories like this one are a good reminder to parents that it's never OK to leave kids alone in the car.

It should be a reminder that people shouldn't leave any living being alone in a car in the heat, be it baby, elderly, or animal.

Never,never, never - no matter how big a pain in the ass it is - NEVER leave the kids in the car.

I hate to think of the way that poor child suffered . . . :(

The last time I heard of this happening the parent who left the child in the car normally did not drop off the child as part of the morning routine. I can't remember if it was a man or woman, but the other spouse usually did the daycare drop and the child was asleep with he/she went to work.

It always boggles my mind when someone goes shopping with their dog. I was at PetCo the other day and someone came in because there was a dog in the car with all the windows up and was salivating all over the windows. It was 92 outside, so imagine how hot the car was. The manager paged for the customer (not saying why of course) but no one came. I was talking to the cashier and made the comment the owner probably wasn't for their store because they allow pets inside. Turns out the guy was in line a 2 people behind me checking out and 1 person behind the lady that did her shopping and made the report. With 4 of us talking about it in front of him, I hope he felt like crap.

Kevin...we will keep this in mind if it happens to you...


it hurts all the same....I JUST lost a brother in a car accident due to some young PUNKS that had no biz being behind the wheel...

NOT newsworthy sure...but it hurts all the same...you cannot imagine how me and mine are feeling right now nor can you imagine how this guy must feel doing this..but don't blow something like this off because it may not be 'news' to you but what this says is for parents to be more vigilant...don't put yourself in a position to suffer like he is suffering so that way you won't become the next 'not newsworthy person' in the newspapers

I hope he didn't mean it's not newsworthy because it happens all the time. :( I remember the woman who was drunk and left her child in the back of her car, and the man who left a toddler in the car while he was gambling in a casino. The worst was the couple who brought the child home from his baptism - mom thought dad had brought him in, dad though mom had - baby died. That one broke my heart even more than the usual. I'm glad they are covered in the news because it seems like such a common sense thing - and yet, it keeps happening, so obviously there is a disconnect somewhere. I wonder if you could invent an alarm that is sensitive to the weight of a baby in the seat - attach it to your key ring and if you get out of the car without the baby it goes off? Of course, the vast majority of parents who do this would never buy it.

Thousands of kids will also drown in pools and choke on hot dogs this summer.

Each case is equally newsworthy.

Sorry for your loss, but there's a reason I didn't read about it on cnn.com.

I don't think that he was blowing it off, I think he was just commenting on whether this qualified as "news." I kind of understand what you're saying about life-changing events (my wife and I were almost killed by a drunk driver in 2007), and I don't think Kevin meant to be dismissive in his post.

Also, as to the story - I really don't understand how someone could leave a small child alone like that. I understand being busy, I understand being distracted, but as a parent, there's a certain level of attention you should be giving to your child.

My heart goes out to him and the rest of the family, and I can't imagine going on in life after a tragedy such as this, but really, what was he thinking?

Agreed...I cant understand how you get so lost in thought that you forget about your child.

That's exactly why it's not newsworthy.

and this is just plain stupid


http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5348692

That link didn't work for me :(

10 bucks says he was on his cell phone.

short version

Mom goes to bar to meet babysitter at bar where she work and drinks beer while waiting , kid left in car in 94 degree heat.

she forgot her kid while she was waiting for the babysitter?

that's just plain stupid...not just anyone should be allowed to have children

This happens all too often and it makes no sense. On another board (a ttc/pregnancy/parenting board) I simply asked the question:

HOW IN THE HELL CAN YOU FORGET YOUR CHILD IS IN THE CAR???
Ya usually would think (well for women at least): keys-check, pocketbook-check, big assed weight of a child hanging from my arm or in the stroller-check, check and check

Well I had people jumping all over my shit when i asked about it. One of the excuses was sleep deprivation. Of course I got the "you are not a parent" card pulled on me by some skank (thanks, asshole...this was said a few months after my own miscarriage) :rolleyes:

Still my question is "how in the hell do you forget your kid in the damn car?"

Waiting for the flames from parents here... :eek:

As far as the TN woman who needed to get her drink on while the kid was roasting in the car. The bitch needs to go under the jail

aint that much forgetfulness in the world.....

I have never forgotten my child in a car. Keys, yes. Purse, yes. ID for work, yes. 10 year old child, no. Almost 2 year old child, no. Sorry, there is just no excuse for forgetting your child in the car.

period.com

That's what VandalShyster said. We are kidless but he doesn't understand that if he can think about what a pet is up to during the day (or me even), that someone wouldn't wonder what their kid was up to during the day.

I also thought that if the day care had called and said "Little Jimmy isn't at daycare today, and you haven't called in to say he is ill or that he wasn't coming in." perhaps the baby would have been found in time. I worked for a day care as a teenager, at least 10 years ago, and we always called if we didn't know the status of a child. Granted it was mostly related to custody issues, but I think it is a good policy.

I said that also, but a few of my co workers (who have kids) said that most of the time, that isn't the case with daycare calling parents to check on absent kids....

usu they don't call, in my experience.

The schools are likely to call if your child isn't there and you didn't call them in as absent. However, I never had a day care call. Logically, since I would have to walk them in the building and sign them in, I'd know that I didn't do that so I'd know they weren't at school.

I have been in automatic pilot where I drive my usual routine even I was supposed to do something differently (like go somewhere right after work). I usually catch it pretty quickly though. I keep trying to think if I could have done this back in the day of my kids being that little. There may have been days where I was so sleep deprived that I forgot that I was supposed to drop them off at day care but I caught it within a mile of going the wrong way. I could TOTALLY see my ex-husband doing this though and we're kinda lucky he never did, I think. He's the most forgetful person I know and I think he could forget a child in the car with him. He often leaves his keys in the front door of his house. The next morning, he'll be searching all over for them. Open the front door and there they are, hanging from the lock still. <rolling eyes> Yeah, he could forget a kid.

I'm horribly ashamed to admit this (and trust me, my son never lets me forget about it, it's become a running joke in our family), but when my 3rd son was an infant, our neighbors across the street invited our family to dinner, so with casserole in arms and kids in tow, we went across the street and had a lovely, if boisterous dinner.

At the end of the night, we packed up our casserole and kids are trudged back across the street to our house, and put the kids to bed. WELL, a few minutes later, my neighbor came across and said, "I think you left something at our house."

I had left my baby sleeping peacefully in their bed.:eek:

We had been so preoccupied with packing up the other two sleepy kids, and the casserole:rolleyes:, that I honestly completely forgot him.

Anyway, I THANK GOD, never left a child in a car (or a pet), but unfortunately, I can see getting so distracted that I forgot my child!!! I know, I'm a terrible mother!!!:o

I have put it down to 3rd child syndrome, once they outnumber you, it gets harder to keep track of them.

I'm not trying to defend this guy by any measure, it is horrific and I cannot imagine the pain that he and his wife and family are enduring and will endure forever, I just can understand how it can happen - doesn't make it ok, just that it happens.

So today I went to pick up the Friday night takeout. Sure enough, in the same parking lot, there were 3 kids left in an SUV. I wouldn't have noticed except for the blood curtling scream. I guess one of the children was hitting the other. Yes the windows were open and it's not too hot out today. Yes we live in a generally safe community, but is it necessary to shop at a Kitchen Center on a Friday night with your kids in the car alone? When I was pulling out of the lot, one of the kids was taunting another family walking to their car. I actually came online just to vent this.

Geez. At what point are people going to learn you CAN'T LEAVE LIVING BEINGS INSIDE F'ING CARS!! :mad:

First, let me acknowledge that YES this is newsworthy, because it has to serve as a wake-up call to parents to stop being stupid. Parents will do anything for their kids, and to have to live with the fact that your decisions caused their death, that cant be easy to deal with.

to play devil's advocate, however... the article says he was a managing director and his son was newly adopted. That makes the guy a parent by definition but clearly not by nature. If anything, he may have regarded his kid with the same importance as whatever is on his schedule for the day--can be moved around, canceled, rescheduled, micromanaged, etc.

I truly believe that this was accidental - he's a businessman and was probably going about his day, completely forgetting about his son. You say, "how the hell..." but it seems logical.

and this is not a sweeping generalization on adults who adopt children and their parenting skills, but similarly, i cant count the number of times my aunt and uncle would call our house looking for their "newly" adopted daughter, because neither one could remember who was "responsible" for her that day. turns out they had let her stay with my aunt's grandparents that weekend. Another time, my cousin WAS at our house. She got dropped off on Friday and they didnt call til TUESDAY saying "oh, we got busy, neither one of us could come to pick her up."

BTW, my uncle runs a non-profit and my aunt is a doctor. Again, careers that take up a lot of their time, and like this guy, regarded their child like they would any other commitment on their calendars.

If youre too busy for kids, you shouldnt have them, biological or adoptive. This man seems like he fit the bill. Dont go fulfilling your dream of being a parent if youre not going to make the sacrifices to be one.

I was watching an Animal Planet show based in Miami. It follows the Animal "cops" - they responded to a call, but too late. A dog had died after being left in the car. :(