Yesterday morning, the woman got up and prepared herself for the day.

She then got her 5 month old baby prepared for day care.

She then loaded the baby and the baby stuff into her mini-van.

She then pulled out of the driveway.

At this point, something must have happened, like she was struck by lightning, or hypnotized by a renegade mezmerizer, or abducted by aliens.... something that can be blamed for her temporary loss of brain function that would account for driving straight to work, and NOT REMEMBERING THAT SHE DID NOT DROP OFF THE BABY AT DAYCARE.

The baby did not survive being locked in a minivan all day in which the authorities say temperatures reached 100 degrees.

How the hell do you forget that you fastened your child into the vehicle, but did not unfasten and remove that same child? I cannot fathom this happening over and over with people.

I think the man (or woman) upstairs needs to start getting more selective with who s/he entrusts these small lives.

It seems to happen every year...I don't get it either. I would wonder what a study would show...out of how many times this has happen was a man or a women who left them in the car. Because my wife is in lala land in the morning. She would forget her head if it wasn't attached yet she is a fricken damn good engineer.

I'm sure the woman will never forgive herself for the rest of her life, either.
People have an amazing ability to punish themselves, at least the ones with consciences.

And she SHOULD be punished, both emotionally by herself and legally.

And she SHOULD be punished, both emotionally by herself and legally.

Amen.
If you're too busy or too wrapped up in things you don't need kids. Children are your first responsibility especially when they are young and cannot fend for themselves.

Sadly I was listening to something about this on the radio the other day. The number was fairly staggering. Was in the dozens of deaths per year. It unbelievable.

I don't understand the anger at the woman from outside parties... saying she should be punished as a criminal right next to child molesters and those who intentionally neglect their children. Or those who are just plain irresponsible (http://www.joystiq.com/2005/06/21/baby-dies-while-parents-play-wow/). It sickens me that it happened, but I do have simpathy.

Now, I don't know the whole of the situation or this woman's mental condition. What I simpathize with is the fact that people make mistakes. Unless this woman had postpartum depression and intended for the baby to die, she made the biggest mistake of her life and she has to live with that for the rest of her life.

The human brain is imperfect. I've been observing this more and more in myself as I've grown and taken on more responsibility, loaded up more stress and started allowing myself less sleep. No, my absent-mindedness hasn't caused the loss of any lives, but I have lost things... from the time it took to drive back home from work because I left my laptop sitting by the door where I set it down 2 minutes before walking out the door, to the countless pairs of sunglasses that I've left at restaurants, to the family keepsake that I left somewhere and never saw again.

Am I comparing forgetting a baby to forgetting my sunglasses? No... not in importance... just in how the brain works. As another example, look at my roomate... he's an intelligent enough person (manager at a large bank), well educated. But in the morning when he is getting ready for work, he does some very goofy stuff. For instance, the other day he got home and found his milk in the cubbord and his cereal in the refridgerator.

Now, I've never had a child, but I do want children. I understand the bond that a mother and child have. But I also understand that a child of that age (5 months) requires almost constant attention. I've heard many times of the sleepless nights and I've seen the redness of my friend's eye's from sheer lack of sleep. The already flawed and imperfect human brain needs sleep. A lowering of the amount of sleep will cause a raise in the number of mistakes a person makes.

As I said, I don't know any details in this case, but lets look at some likelyhoods: Here you have a woman that is working who knows how many hours to support her child, is probably not getting much sleep, may or may not have the father around to care for the child, may not have been back to work very long if she was on maternity leave, the child was probably soundly asleep in the back of the vehicle.

The only thing I find hard to fathom is that she went the whole day without realizing the child was in the car. Then again, anyone who has things that they have to do every day and has had something come up that made them forget to do it, could easily continue their day as normal, thinking they did it. It happens to me all the time. I work in IT. I have to do some checkups every morning to check the backups, make sure SQL server jobs ran, etc. But if I come in and there's some emergency, I'll take care of that and it is easy for me to forget that I didn't do the checkups. Why? Because I remember doing it... yesterday.

Its sad, but this may very well be what happened to this woman. What caused her to forget? Who knows... but she probably went through the whole day thinking she brought the child to the day-care that morning. One might argue that someone at work surely would have asked about how her child was doing, or sometime during the day she would have thought about the child and realized what had happend... but not everyone works in an office where people are involved on a personal level. Also, she may have a highly involved, high stress job that might keep her mind busy all day.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying its OK that this happened. And I don't know the details. For all I know she could be mentally unstable and needs help, which she would hopefully get. All I'm saying is that if she is just a normal woman, with a normal (imperfect) brain, and she made a mistake, I have simpathy for her and she is going to put herself through more anguish over her mistake than any reprimand from the government could.

No... let people like this suffer their own punishment and let others learn from the mistakes they have made. Let the authorities use their resources on blatant, knowing, intentional wrongdoers.

A very sad situation.... we don't know the circumstances I suspect... I know that one day I was backing out of my garage and I ran over something that scared the shit out of me... my first thought was one of my toddlers had managed to get out and behind my car..... Luckily for me it was a basketball.....

I hadn't looked under my car before backed out. Yes, my kids were *supposed* to be inside but who is to say that they didn't go out the back door and around to the garage?

I feel for this woman. I suspect it was not intentional. But she will have to be judged by her peers for this one.

One of my friends at work is an EMT and a couple summers ago he had to go to home were a toddler was run over by a lawnmower and both his legs and one of his arms were cut off. It was a case that the father thought the mother was watching him and the mother thought the father was watching him. He backed out of his garage and in a split second his son was under his lawn mower.

Why didn't the daycare center call the woman to ask where the child was? Maybe she didn't use them every day?

Is there a technology solution to this problem? Probably some money to be made in solving it if not...