Day Care And Dead Toddlers

Every summer, the stories come. And the tiny bodies
pile up. “Toddler
trapped in hot van dies.” “Kids
die from heat in SUV.” “Baby
boy dies in hot van.”

Some of the tragedies involve outright parental
neglect—a father who recklessly leaves an infant in the
driveway so he can go inside the house alone and take a
nap; a mother who selfishly locks her child in the car
so she can go shopping at the mall.

In a few other cases, it`s an absent-minded parent or
grandparent who has, in the words of one Philadelphia
area man`s lawyer, a “senior moment” and “forgets” the
child is in the backseat.

But in what seems an increasingly common trend, too
many of these horrible deaths share a common
denominator:

day care.

In Lancaster, Calif., this week, five-year-old Dakota
Prince and three-year-old Nehemiah Prince died inside an
SUV parked in 100-degree heat outside A Child`s Place
daycare center. The children had been forgotten by their
foster mother, who ran the busy daycare operation and
left them in the parking lot, where

“she thought someone else was going to get the children
out of the car,” police said.

Also this week, in Nashville, Tenn., 22-month-old

David Gordon died after being left all day in his
mother`s van parked outside the Small Wonders daycare
center. Gordon`s mother ran the center. With his face
burned and body showing “obvious signs of heat
injuries,” David went unnoticed until another parent
saw him in the van when she came to pick up her own
child.

In Memphis, Tenn., two-year-old

Amber Cox-Cody died last week of hyperthermia and
dehydration after she was left for

nearly eight hours in a day care van outside the
Children`s Rainbow Learning Center. Amber was buried
last week with her Minnie Mouse doll. She became the
eighth child to die in a

Memphis day care van since 1997.

Among them: Tennessean

Brandon Mann, 2, who perished in 1999 after being
locked in a van outside the Pee Wee Wisdom Learning
Center and 22-month-old Darnecia Slater, who died the
same summer after being left in a van at the Children`s
Palace Learning Center.

In Orlando, Fla., last month, two-year-old

Dominique Royals was left in a hot van by day-care
workers for several hours before dying in 140-degree
heat. Detectives said Rutherford Family Day Care Home
operators misled them by

claiming the boy had crawled into the van by himself
while playing hide-and-seek with other children.

Orlando witnessed a similar disaster two summers
earlier, when two-year-old

Zaniyah Hinson was left to die in a van used by the
Abundant Life Academy of Learning.

Also last month, in Austin, Texas, two-year-old

Chloe Abbott died after she was left in an SUV
outside a La Petite day care center. Two-year-old

Alan Brown, Jr., died in May after he was left in a
van outside the

Little Dudes and Daisies Daycare and Learning Center
in a Dallas suburb.

“He loved Hot Wheels,” his aunt said at his
funeral.

Parent activists are demanding more laws, regulation,
and government oversight to prevent similar deaths.

“Kids in Cars,” a non-profit group, has launched
a legislative and educational campaign with bumper
stickers that warn:

“A car is not a babysitter.”

Some of these measures may help. But there is a need
to look deeper.

I believe Dakota, Nehemiah, David, Amber, Brandon,
Darnecia, Dominique, Zaniyah, Chloe, and Alan are not
merely victims of isolated daycare accidents. They are
also symptoms of a culture where parents treat children
as disposable as their diapers. Some of these kids
probably spent more of their brief lives in their deadly
car seats than they did in their own parents` laps.

It is absolutely unfathomable to me that anyone could
leave a child forgotten in a car, like an old umbrella
or a fast food wrapper.

But then again, we live in an age where teens dump
their

newborns in toilets and junkies sell their offspring
for drugs and “liberated” women pick up and drop off
their kids at day care as nonchalantly as their dry
cleaning.

Why must it take the unforgettable suffering of
innocents, stifling to death in sun-baked cars, to
remind mothers and fathers of the sanctity of life?

Michelle Malkin [email
her] is author of

Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.
Click

here for Peter Brimelow`s review. Click

here for Michelle Malkin`s website.

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