The case last month of a Georgia man who left his toddler to bake to death in a parked car while he sexted multiple women brought new attention to a heinous crime. But is has done nothing to diminish the instances of this unique and heartless form of abuse, which, if anything, is on the rise.
Monday brought two new cases. According to Fox4 in Kansas City, a two-year-old girl was left unattended in an unlocked vehicle with its windows partly open, while the child’s mother, 29-year-old Tiquana Pasco, went off, evidently to browse in stores.
A passerby named Jeremy Welch was returning to his car with his family following dinner in a restaurant when he noticed the child, whom he said was “sweating profusely.” He added:
Finally my wife said, ‘the little girl can’t stay in there.’ She opened the car and pulled the child out. The woman with the car next door, she got a bottle of water and was giving the little girl some water.
As the Welches attended to the child, Pasco returned to the car and became irate. Welch told reporters:
She … ran over and grabbed her child and yanked on her. The child then began crying and my wife said, ‘no, I am not giving you your child back. You need to wait for police.’ She continued to shove at me and slap me and push me to try and get around me, and I just stood in her way and told her she couldn’t have her child back until the police got there.
According to the police report, Pasco said she was inside a Game Stop store for three to four minutes before returning to her car where she encountered a stranger holding her child. She told police she “scuffled” with one of the witnesses.
After being detained by police, she acknowledged, “I was totally wrong for leaving her in the car.” She also said she was aware of recent cases where children had died as a result of being left in a hot car. The police report confirms that the temperature was 89 degrees at the time of the officers’ arrival at approximately 7:30 p.m.
Online records reveal that Pasco is still in police custody, being held on a $1,500 cash or surety bond. If convicted she faces up to a year in jail.
Out of the frying pan and into the second case, which, in contrast, makes Tiquana Pasco deserving of mother-of-the-year award. The Tampa Bay Times reports that 36-year-old Krastina Yankova Gesheva left her 8-year-old son unattended in her Mercedes for four hours while she went drinking. According to the police report in this case, the child apparently wandered several times during the course of the night into the lounge where his mom was boozing.
Gesheva might have gotten off scot-free had she not backed into two parked cars when she finally left the lounge around 3 a.m. and attempted to drive home.
When police arrived, a crowd had gathered and Gesheva was visibly impaired, police said. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.177, more than twice the level at which Florida law presumes impairment. The boy, who was in the back seat, was released to a guardian, police said.
Gesheva was taken to the Pinellas County jail, where she charged with DUI and was released Monday after posting $10,500 bail.
According to the Washington Post, at least 17 children have been left to die in hot cars this years. Time to figure out how to stop the madness?
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