To think, 'who the fuck leaves a three month old alone in a car'?

[Stellenbosch]

What the ACTUAL fuck is wrong with people?

Shopper 'saves life of baby who was left in Asda carpark in heatwave'
dailym.ai/2OmfD3j

This afternoon as I left Sainsburys (3.45pm)... A woman was being shouted at by another shopper. She had just parked up in the baby spaces and was going to leave her baby in the car whilst she nipped inside.
He was tearing a strip off of her..and using colourful language (I thought unecessary in front of kids)..but good for him for calling her out. She didn't seem to realise that she was doing anything wrong...and got the baby and its seat out of the car and went inside.

Thinking about it...the guy was right to shout as he did...as she might not now be so stupid again.
Some people shouldn't be allowed to have children or animals.

Why all these excuses for the mother

Not all mothers care that much not all feel responsible some see their children as a pita

Obviously SS are involved and should be

There have been the really sad incidents of people forgetting about a baby is left in the car but this doesn’t seem the case here by what’s reported

Not exactly the same but we once saw a lost child at the back of a shop while an announcement was put out for his mum. He would have been maybe two years old.

They made the announcement several times and nobody came. Eventually a woman wandered along and they said they'd been calling for her and she said "Oh, well, yes I heard that but then I knew he was safe so I just went next door as well to get a few bits while he was with you."

My husband is a police officer and once had to deal with a case where the baby died in these very circumstances, our own little one was about the same age at that time and so it resonated more with him. So sad.

Gosh that is terrible. I’ve got a 2 month old dd and I just couldn’t imagine leaving her in the car. Doesn’t bare thinking about.

I thought the mother might be unwell, based on the way she was described.

@PeachGreen, was it the article by Gene Weingarten called 'Fatal distraction'? That article absolutely haunted me. It made it clear how easily a child could be forgotten in a car, and how it could genuinely happen to anyone. He won a Pulitzer Prize for it, if I remember rightly.

“Fatal Distraction” is horribly disturbing and utterly heartbreaking.

If this happened in the US, the parents would have the baby taken away from them and put into care. It has happened to parents with children much older who have been left unsupervised, even for valid reasons. So a situation like this where it was clearly not accidental and for no valid reason would result in the parents losing their child. I usually think that's overkill but in a case like this, where there is blatant neglect, it would be justified.

Yeah, agree the mother must have PND or something

Okay I know there have been parents who have accidentally left their child in the car. and have paid the ultimate price for it.
I suppose they forgot due to sheer exhaustion.

Obviously no one could hurt these parents anymore.

However this is an entirely different kettle of fish. WTF goes shopping and leaves a baby in a car. Regardless of the temperature. Not that Itd be excusable but. Its not like she was just running in and out.
As for the security guard. I'm confident the law would have been more than on his side. Also if Asda would have sacked hIm. They'd have been made a absolute cunt out of.

I'm sorry but a car is not a baby-sitter. I leave my DSD in the car BUT she's 13 and has a phone.

Any child under 10 should NEVER be left alone in a car. EVER.

Urgh!

I found a baby left in a car once. It wasn’t a particularly warm day but even so it felt odd. Baby looked less than a year, maybe 8-10 months. I waited a couple of minutes and then phoned the police. whilst I was on phone Mum sauntered back totally baffled by the concern. Said baby was sleeping so it was fine. Police spoke to her on my phone and took her details, told her SS would be informed. She was completely unconcerned by the whole thing. I was expecting her to go mad at me for calling the police but she was just “meh” like she wasn’t really bothered. It was weird.

Any child under 10 should NEVER be left alone in a car. EVER

No parenting awards for me then. I've left mine often under age 10 in the car.

She walked slowly back to the car.. and just stared at the ground
I wonder if she is not coping. Maybe she has post natal depression and needed a break? I hope she gets help and support.

Answer: a person with serious deficiency in empathy, intelligence, common sense, or all three. Btw this would appear to be a clear case of child neglect - a serious criminal offence - so I assume the local police will now be investigating the mother of the child rather than just giving “words of advice”.

The security guard wouldnt break in omg he should have just done it , atleast the shopper was not scared to do something

I wouldn’t be rushing to diagnose the mother with PND.

There are plenty of women with PND who wouldn’t dream of jeopardising their babies safety like this. Of course there is a possibility the Mum is unwell, it’s a stretch to claim that she definitely has mental health problems and exclude the possibility she’s unable to properly assess risk to her baby.

“Fatal Distraction” is horribly disturbing and utterly heartbreaking.

Truly it was, I remember reading it nearly a decade or so ago with the initial belief that I could and would never 'forget' my DC, but that article honestly chilled me to the bones as it clearly resonated to me that this scenario could very well happen to myself, that no one was really safe from from their own biology, born from human error.

I feel so much for families that suffer this fate, but I am not naive enough to think there are not people out there that will use this as a way to kill their children or as a cry for help.

I hope this was just an honest mistake, if not that then a cry for help that goes answered, I don't even want to entertain the other option.

I’m not sure what is more horrifying; the fact that the parents didn’t come out after the tanning announcements, or the fact that the jobsworth security guard didn’t smash the bloody window open.

Unfortunately, I believe it to be very possible that people can forget that they have a baby in the car - in certain circumstances.

You wouldn't believe the number of people who have "forgotten" their kids in the car to die here. www.cnn.com/2018/06/12/health/hot-car-deaths-study/index.html

It's so regular an occurrence here, USA, they run public awareness campaigns in the summer months. There was an horrific case here a few years ago involving a toddler, Cooper Harris, whose shitstain of a father murdered him in this manner in order to cash in on a couple of life insurance policies. The descriptions during the trial of what that poor little boy would have suffered while literally slowly baking to death in that car have haunted me ever since.

@GnusSitOnCanoes That's the one. I will never forget it. It was the guy who tried to wrestle a gun from the attending police officer to kill himself that really haunted me. I don't think I could read it again now I have my own baby but it really was a brilliantly written article.

The poor security guard, he must have been anguished. The mother, well, that is not the usual behavior is it? something is going on

As I said upthread, according to local comments the security guard couldn't get the door open, immediately called the emergency services who said they were on their way (apparently the fire station is literally across the road) and told her not to break the glass. The shopper then saw that the boot was unlocked so crawled in and passed baby out to the guard. Another person then took baby into their air conditioned car to cool down and emergency services arrived within 2 mins. There is some anger that this story has been retold as 'hero shopper ignores jobsworth security guard and breaks into car'.

You should break the window which is furthest away from the child in order not to injure them with glass. Although car window glass is designed to shatter into little circles/hexagons so it should not be sharp. Then reach in to unlock the car using the door locks which should open the back door and let you get to the child seat. If you can already see signs of heat distress (newborns do not usually sweat that much) then you do this immediately. The law is on your side.

Possibly the guard was ignorant of the law or there had been some previous incident where someone had got into trouble, but still.

Steff, you should read the Fatal Distraction article before judging. I believe it happens more often in the US due to a combination of factors - different workplace car park set ups, short parental leave, high pressure on parents, as well as a different climate. It's not typically so hot in the UK that a child left in a car would be in mortal danger, even during summer (though, obviously, still not great to leave them).

Perhaps there are a minority of parents who are neglectful or malicious - but I believe most car deaths are utterly tragic accidents.