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.
That being said, this worker should still be held criminally accountable for the death of this child. Regardless of the states culpability in not allocating enough money to hire the number of workers necessary to care for the children they supervise, this person was still criminally negligent.
that’s a tough one for me. I mean there need to be repercussions. After all, they did take the job and did know the responsibilities. But maybe they expected more support to avoid these kinds of mistakes. Or maybe they expected the hiring manager to ensure they were qualified. And likely they will have to live with this horrible pain for the rest of there lived. No way to know from here. But I am not sure it “automatically” should result in crimanal charges that I would expect jail time from.
Well, the letter of the law is clear enough. IANAL but it looks like there’s probable cause for manslaughter charges. We’ll have to see if the DA agrees. But that doesn’t mean a jury will convict. They’ll want to hear all of the details that we don’t yet know.
On a general level, though, I would say your position is soft. I believe that if you work a job with small children or other people who can’t keep themselves safe (people with Alzheimer’s, etc.), you have a moral obligation to keep them reasonably safe. If your working conditions are so bad that you can’t, then either blow the whistle or quit. If you don’t, everyone will blame you in the end. This is basic CYA for any job, of course, but it’s extra important when people’s lives are on the line.
Yeah, my laymans understanding of manslaughter fits the bill. But laws are “funny”. And I want to agree with what you said about blow the whistle or quit. But I understand how hard that is for a lot of people. Also, it’s hard to blow the whistle on something everyone already knows is bad. If people didn’t have to work to survive (health insurance, rent, food…) it would be a lot easier to quit if you felt you couldn’t safely do the job. But the system was designed to make it hard for people to quit. So I have trouble blaming people for not being able to do it.