Mom Gets Out of Car to Smoke, Is Arrested for Leaving Kids Unattended

A mom is in the parking lot with her three
tots in the car. She wants to smoke a cigarette so she actually
gets out of the car—that’s how conscientious she is—and lights
up.

Nearby store employees see the children as “unattended.” And
that is when the cops get involved, of course. As
TheCitizen.com reports:

Det. Mike Whitlow said Courtney B. Tabor, 33, was charged with
three misdemeanor counts of leaving a minor child unattended, a
city ordinance violation.

Whitlow said employees at the Michael’s store at Hudson Plaza on
North Glynn Street saw the three small children in the back of a
van with no adult visible in the vicinity. Two of the children were
one year of age while the other was age two, Whitlow added.

Whitlow said the car was running but the air conditioner was
not. [Note: Other accounts dispute this.]

Police were subsequently called to the scene, Whitlow said. Once
officers in a patrol unit arrived, Tabor approached the vehicle,
telling officers she was in the vicinity smoking a cigarette.

Whitlow noted that while Tabor might have been in close
proximity, she did not appear to have been focused enough to notice
the store’s employees standing by her vehicle.

Whitlow added that, in this particular case, it was not as much
a matter of the young children being in a hot car, rather it was
the potential for harm or kidnapping that could result from leaving
them unattended.

As radio
host Michael Graham, who called this case to my attention,
put it:

OK, OK, I get it: My mom and dad, who left my sister and I in
the West Columbia, SC, K-Mart parking lot while they went into shop
should have been beheaded by the Taliban for the crime of child
abandonment. OK, fine.

And yes–leaving kids in a hot car with the windows up in 90
degree heat is both stupid and dangerous. I absolutely agree with
that.

But is Riverdale, GA really going to put a mom in jail for
standing near her car, smoking a cigarette?

In a country that believes arresting parents for theoretical
far-fetched horrors, yes. Leaving your kids for even a few minutes
is a crime. Even if you are nearby. Even if you are consciously
uncoupled from them so they don’t inhale secondhand smoke. Any
second you are not fully and completely “focused” on them, you are
committing a crime. Clearly your kids are at huge risk of
the
boogeyman kidnapping, in a public place, during store
hours.