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.
Well if that is how you read it… it isn’t what I said, but I can’t help your choice of interpretation. But as long as we don’t put some blame on the management and funding deciders, this kind of thing will continue.
You definitely included the employee’s low pay as context to consider. Another person likely would’ve prevented this from occurring, but the fact is that only one person was involved. The amount of pay that person received does not negate their failure to not kill a child. They could’ve been coerced into taking care of the child against their will and that would still not absolve them of guilt, in my opinion.
I did, but not as motivation. Low pay means the hiring manager usually don’t have a large pool of people from which to choose a person with the skills for the job.
If a worker had a heart attack and died in the car in a parking lot on a hot day with the kid in the back, and the kid died. Would you still nlame the worker? Or would you ask why wasn’t there some system in place to handle the possibility of an incapacitated worker. Like a checkin system when they are with a child, or a partner.
Now add on that humans making mistakes is a whole lot more likely than a sudden heart attack incapacitating someone. Yet no system or plan exists to prevent it from resulting in the death of the child. This was entirely preventable, it just wasn’t worth the cost to the policy makers.
And no, the worker shouldn’t be completely absolved from guilt. They shouldn’t be allowed to work 1:1 with vulnerable people ever again. But will jail time solve anything? If there was some evidence that it was more than just a horrible mistake, then sure. But if not, I don’t see how putting all the blame on them will prevent it from happening in the future.