The family of 3-year-old Ke’Torrius “K.J.” Starkes Jr. is remembering the little boy as a “joyful,” “brilliant” “happy boy who loved life, who would light up any room that he would enter into.”
The toddler died after he was trapped inside a hot car while in the custody of a worker contracted by the Alabama Department of Human Resources, the state’s child protective services agency, according to the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office and the state Department of Human Resources. The Birmingham Police Department is investigating the death.
K.J. had been left inside a car parked outside a home in Birmingham for several hours during the middle of the day on Tuesday, the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
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According to the article the woman picked him up from daycare, went to a supervised visit with the father, then ran errands with K.J. still in the backseat for an hour instead of bringing him back to daycare, then went home and left him for 5 hours still strapped in the backseat and was only made aware he was still there when the daycare called to see why he hadn’t been returned.
How the hell do you forget you have child in a car? That has to be a drug situation or some kind of mental impairment.
This situation aside, quite easily. Especially if not your own, you don’t drive kids places often, are exhausted or feeling unwell, have too much other stuff getting overwhelming, and of course the kid being nice and quiet. Possibly also just leaving the kid there for a short time at first, and then forgetting, which would be the irresponsible way under these conditions (heat, closed windows, no escape).
It can happen to anyone, according to research. I can’t fathom the guilt someone must feel over such a horrific accident.