Here is another story for my what were they thinking file. According to fox59.com, a couple from Bartholomew County Indiana decided to leave their four-month old infant in their truck while they went shopping.
Brown County Sheriff’s Deputy Nathan Tompkins made the 911 call Monday evening. He said he’d just pulled into the Jay C grocery store parking lot in Columbus when someone alerted him about the baby.
“As soon as I got up to the truck I could hear a baby screaming in the back seat,” said Tompkins. “I didn’t even think. I just, was like, this kid needs to get out of there.”
The temperature outside was around 75 degrees and although the truck windows were rolled down, Tompkins said the baby was in distress from the heat.
“When I pulled the child out of the seat I had to take a fleece blanket off of him,” he explained. “When I pulled him out of the seat, I immediately felt that his outfit was soaked through with sweat. And I could notice that there was water droplets on his head and on his face where he’d been sweating. And he’d also spit up. So there was vomit down his chin and all down, all the way down his belly.”
Tompkins said he held onto the baby until an ambulance showed up. Then, he said, the boy’s parents came out of the grocery store.
“It might have been 20 or 30 minutes before I’d seen the woman come out of the store.”
He said the couple is lucky the situation didn’t end worse.
“You can’t leave a child that young alone for any amount of time,” said Tompkins. “It’s a potentially fatal situation.”
It wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been. The temperature was not too hot and the baby was unharmed, but how could anyone leave an infant alone for any length of time? Four month old babies are completely helpless and there is no telling what could have happened. And, since they were a couple, if they didn’t want to take the baby into the store, couldn’t one of them stay behind to baby-sit?
I have to wonder if these people were thinking at all.
David's Commonplace Book 