By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, February 26, 2007
Last week in Calgary, little Sienna Rose Manson died. The day before her second birthday she was left alone in a running SUV with her 6-year-old brother. Sienna Rose was in the backseat while her brother Justice was in the front listening to the radio. Their mom, Lisa Coad, 33, left the kids to run into the law office where she works to drop off some files. The toddler managed to get out of her car seat and climb up on the arm rest and put her head out the window. It is believed that her knee triggered the power window controls causing the window to go up, trapping her head in a vice like grip. During this time, her older brother had fallen asleep in the front seat.
A passerby noticed the child and managed to free her and lay her down in the back seat before leaving the vehicle to call 911. Before he returned, Coad came back and noticed her two "sleeping" children. She buckled them in and then drove off, passing emergency vehicles that were responding to the 911 call. Sometime later she discovered that her daughter had not been sleeping but was unconscious. Police and other emergency workers arrived but the child could not be revived. Little Sienna Rose was pronounced dead.
Oh well; accidents happen.
Reports indicate that Calgary police have no intention of charging the dead girl's mother. And Ms. Coad, while blaming herself is being comforted by her family and friends who tell her that they leave (or perhaps more appropriately, have left) their children unattended in vehicles all the time. No doubt.
What happened to Sienna Rose Manson can be considered a fluke; a bizarre set of circumstances, the omission of any one of which would have allowed her to see her second birthday. But leaving children in unattended vehicles resulting in unintended consequences seems to be coming more and more frequent. Hippy soccer moms who would never dare let their precious children walk around the block alone to go to school have no compunction about leaving them alone in a vehicle, running or otherwise, while they go do something that they regard as more important (usually shopping) than properly supervising their kids. They can't be bothered taking the kid with them while they briefly go into a store or, in Lisa Coad's case, her office.
There isn't a summer heat wave that goes by where there isn't an incident of a baby or child being left alone in a sweltering vehicle while a parent goes into a store for "a few seconds". Pets are also left in vehicles in similar situations but at least leaving Fido in the car leads to an appropriate outrage being levelled at the person who left their pet in that situation. Had Ms. Coad left a dog in her car under similar circumstances, it's a safe bet that her friends wouldn't be so quick to admit that they did it too.
There are several instances where babies and children have been left in unlocked and running vehicles while a parent runs into a store or up to a gas bar cashier, only to return to find both the vehicle and the child missing. Usually these situations have a happy ending when the car thief and unintentional kidnapper realizes that he has an unwanted passenger and abandons both at the earliest opportunity. And it is not just for sport that casinos have security officers patrol parking lots, looking for children who have been left their while mommy or daddy runs in to hit it big. Seek and you shall find.
Many parents have come of age in the "me" generation where what they want takes priority over everything else including the well being of their own children. And contrary to what Liberal leader Stphane Dion keeps telling us over and over again in those now boring Conservative Party ads, it is not all that difficult to set priorities, especially when helpless children and infants are involved. And with today's safety requirements, many parents are just too lazy to spend the extra few minutes that it takes to take their children in and out of their car seats.
Like the drunk driver, these parents take the risk because they figure, quite correctly, that nothing will probably happen. And nothing probably will. Perhaps in 20 or 30 years, leaving children unattended in vehicles will at least be as socially unacceptable as drunk driving is today.
Like the innocent victims of a drunk driver, Sienna Rose Manson's death was a tragedy--but one that could easily have been prevented.
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