DC parents leave kids in car for wine tasting

[Anonymous]

The story reminded me a little of the little girl who was abducted (?) from her hotel in Portugal while her parents had dinner at the hotel restaurant.

It could have had the same outcome - these parents are lucky it is only endagering the welfare of a child.

[Anonymous]

so it got downgraded from cruelty to children to "attempted child neglect"--how is this attempted? They succeeded in neglecting their children as planned. They weren't thwarted from an effort to abandon them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still don't understand why they drove... Unless the plan was always to leave them in the car...

Here's what I think: it was cold, so they drove. Kids fell asleep in car, they decided, oh, why wake them? We use a monitor at home, let's just rig up our own monitor here via iphone and we can hear them and watch through window. It's fine. When they wake, we'll get them. The kids probably had socks or shoes on but kicked them off (happens all the time). As for hysterically crying, isn't all crying hysterical? I bet they will hire a great lawyer and turn this into a personal choice/monitoring debate. The kids were FINE. Just saying, no way in hell would I do this, but I bet this is how they "justified" it and what will happen when they tell their story. Remember, the dad did say they were monitoring them.

That's not my theory. My theory is that either
A) They had a sitter, who cancelled at the last minute
or
B) Each parent thought the other had arranged for the sitter, and it wasn't until shortly before they were supposed to leave that they realized no one had.

Either way, they found themselves without a sitter at the last minute. Kids were probably napping, so they put them in the car, expecting they could go in and out of the event quickly, before the kids even woke up. Just in case, they decided to keep the open line on their phones to use like a "baby monitor."

Of course, time flies when you're having fun, and before they knew it almost an hour had passed. Usually the kids are awake by now, but we can't hear anything (probably too noisy in the restaurant.) Maybe one of should just go check really quick...and that's when Dad went back to the car that was already surrounded by cops...

I had the same theory, they had a sitter or some sort of childcare that fell through at the last minute, and they had already paid for the wine tasting and canceling would mean not getting a refund. Some people can get really hung up on losing out on money this way, regardless of how much income/wealth they had. So in order not to lose out on the money they paid for the wine tasting they came up with this insane plan. I bet they drove their kids around until they fell asleep, put the phone on FaceTime or a phone call, and went to Ris. I hope this was just a one time enormous lapse in judgment.

[Anonymous]

So how old were these children? Does anyone know if they were adopted? Surrogates involved?

I ask b/c the reports say they left a 22-month-old boy and a slightly older girl.

I find this story something that I can not stop coming back to. You have a mom who is 46 who had a child at 43 and 44 - and now after whatever efforts went into that, you think it is OK to leave the kids in the car to go taste some wine?

[Anonymous]

This is very common in some countries. In Scandinavia people often leave kids outside in a pram.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Taking the children away from their parents is cruel and needless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So under your theory, they planned on taking the kids with them into the wine tasting, but since the kids fell asleep, they left them in the car?

they did not have shoes! That was never the plan

How do you know? The kids could have kicked the shoes off.

I haven't read the last 10 pages of this thread so don't know if there is new info, but it was the young one (22 months old?) who didn't have on shoes, right? I read that and immediately thought that the child took his/her shoes and socks off in the car seat, because that's my just-turned-2 yr old's MO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was too cold for them to walk 4 blocks to this wine tasting, but not too cold for them to leave their tiny children locked inside an unheated car for an hour? WITH NO SOCKS OR SHOES ON!? Wtf?

I think they drove around the area to get their kids to fall asleep.

Apparently, they planned to leave them in the car. And to the poster who mentioned that it is a violation to use the internal email system to look her up. You can gather the same information on FDAzilla.com. Public Information, government employee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is very common in some countries. In Scandinavia people often leave kids outside in a pram.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Taking the children away from their parents is cruel and needless.

1. We are not in Scandinavia. Their actions are illegal here, in the United States, which is where they are.

2. Leaving your child in a stroller outside a shop in warm weather while you run errands may be culturally appropriate in some places. Leaving your child for an hour (and it would have been longer, if the cops didn't come) in an unheated car in the middle of winter is appropriate nowhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds to me like these kids would BENEFIT from being in foster care. Seriously, people. Take out the fact that they are highly educated and own a million dollar home. If this happened to a low SES couple these kids would be gone. These two have no business being parents.

Agree! They seem like selfish idiots who put their own wants/needs before those of their young children. This is very different from the Silver Spring case (older kids walking to park alone). These are essentially babies, left alone in a freezing car on a city street. Dangerous, and illegal. The parents may also have alcohol issues if they put wine drinking/tasting over the welfare of their babies. Idiots!!! and regardless of how much $$$$ they have, their kids should be removed from their care until these idiots can prove they are fit parents. Money does not give one common sense or brains. True that if these were poor black kids they would be removed and the parent's jailed. It likely would not have made the news either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should have just dropped them off at a park in Silver Spring.

Not similar in any way-that is an asinine statement!

[Anonymous]

You have a mom who is 46 who had a child at 43 and 44 -

I have seen differing reports on the ages of the parents - I thought he was 45 and she was 41?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You have a mom who is 46 who had a child at 43 and 44 -

I have seen differing reports on the ages of the parents - I thought he was 45 and she was 41?

or adopted

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they ,use have just called one phone from the other and then left the call open. But why didn't they come out when the child was crying?

And why am I so interested in this story?

Juste heard a few stories on this via WTOP. The call on the phones was for 58 minutes according to court documents. I have a Verizon iPhone 5, I can do FaceTime call without wifi, but on my older iPhone I needed wifi. So I think it is possible to do FaceTime without wifi with the newer models. The father on,y approached th car when police showed up. At that point the daughter was already crying hysterically, so if they had the call they weren't monitoring it because they never approached the car the entire time they were in RIs, there were eye witnessed and apparently a security video camera showing the parked car and the video had been reviewed. So the kid is crying, no one comes, but police show up and then the parents show up???

In DC, there is no law on the book re how old a child has to be when unattended. They compared it to the recent Maryland free range parenting case with the two kids walking home alone. In Maryland a kid must be 8, and if younger than 8 must be with someone 13 or older. BUT in Virginia and Maryland, it is up to the discretion of the parents and depends on the situation, with what type of harm were the children or risks. And here is where the parents are in major trouble, because the average prudent parent wouldn't leave two toddlers alone in a locked car, with no hats or gloves, one without shoes or socks, when it is 35 degrees, for an hour, to go wine tasting. To run into the pharmacy to get a prescription, then there may be some wiggle room, but because of the weather, the children's age, the length of time, the lack of clothes, and the activity in which the parents wre partaking, the parents are in serious trouble, according to the legal expert (which should come as no surprise). And it is unclear if the father is a US citizen, if he just has a green card or visa, he risks being deported.

Maybe they were Ferberizing...Ah, we could see her on FaceTime, she was fine!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they ,use have just called one phone from the other and then left the call open. But why didn't they come out when the child was crying?

And why am I so interested in this story?

The father did come to the car, and that is where the police were. Maybe he was responding to the crying he heard through the phone?

I had previously read that the parents were arrested inside of Ris, but this new information contradicts that report. So maybe the parents really were paying attention to the sounds through the phone?

+1 I think they'll get off and make the talk show circuit. Charges were already reduced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You have a mom who is 46 who had a child at 43 and 44 -

I have seen differing reports on the ages of the parents - I thought he was 45 and she was 41?

Public records, WTOP and Washington Post have her age as 46

Latest WTOP story had the older child at 2 and a half and the younger one as 22 months