Posted on 09/05/2010 10:52:52 AM PDT by Feline_AIDS
CHARLESTON — A Charleston man is charged with unlawful neglect after deputies say one of his twin daughters walked out of their home and fell into a pond while he slept.
Authorities responded to 2903 Doncaster Drive at 6:13 p.m. Thursday and found one of the 1-year-old girls neck deep in a pond behind the house. A dog was in the water with her, preventing the girl from going under, a Charleston County Sheriff’s Office incident report said.
Deputies charged Adam S. Gray, 33, with unlawful neglect by a custodian after firefighters pulled the girl from the pond and took her to a local hospital to be evaluated, the report said.
A Charleston police officer entered the house through an unlocked back door and found Gray asleep in bed. The officer was able to wake him up after several attempts, the report said.
Gray told officers he put the sleeping children inside their cribs about 5 p.m. and closed the door to their upstairs bedroom before going to his room next to it and falling asleep. He said he usually could hear the girls if they attempted to go down the stairs but didn’t this time, the report said.
Police say the twins were able to push down a gate at the edge of the stairwell and then walk downstairs and out the back door, when one of them fell into the pond. A neighbor heard the girl’s playful voice and called police.
The mother took custody of the children.
Gray does not have any felony convictions in South Carolina, according to a State Law Enforcement Division criminal record check.
A magistrate set Gray’s bail at $10,000 Friday.
A drunken pit bull.
Now there is a concept!
Meanwhile Mothers kill their children and the media rushes to their defense, to the point of creating new psychotic episodes that excuse them from their behavior.
Somebody knew something and just thought that a phone call was sufficient.
Not Guilty.
The father is acquitted because he took the reasonable precaution of buying a good dog!
Seriously, from the news story there is no evidence a crime was committed.
Just more bad police work.
I was working 2nd into 3rd shift when my twinnies were small, and I'd put in a video, tell them my feet were cold and they had to sit on them to keep them warm and then fall dead asleep for a while.
Lucky for me they listened, stayed sitting on my feet and woke me up when their tape was over.
Far from criminal - it's called survival
Initially, this does not seem a fair thing at all to the father.
Are we to expect to physically lock all our kids in their rooms while we nap? Then, when a fire breaks out, they die because they themselves can’t leave.
This is getting crazy.
Neighbor knows in heart parent is irresponsible, child is outside at dawn, calls police because if neighbor goes to property there may be conflict
That was my first thought. Who the hell would see a one-year-old toddler in a pond, in danger of drowning, and proceed to go in and dial 911? How long did it take them to respond? Maybe 15 minutes?
If it hadn’t been for the dog, and for pure luck, the kid might have drowned even if it only took one minute.
Something isn’t right there. Either this father was so horrible that the neighbors didn’t dare intervene, or the witness who called the cops was a complete idiot.
Or the witness was more interested in getting the father in trouble with the police than with saving the life of the child.
***I don’t know, do other FReepers think I am crazy?***
You are still perfectly sane and I agree with you. Toddlers are smart, sneaky and speedy. The parents put a *safety* gate on the stairs and probably locked all the doors - so I cannot see where the dad was negligent.
Our perception is being changed because of too many horror stories on missing and exploited children.
Being a parent today means never taking your eyes off your children for a second or sleeping without motion sensors and door alarms.
When I was barely able to walk, probably younger than this girl, I got out of the house and walked down the middle of the street until an elderly neighbor who was working in her yard saw me and walked me back home.
My mother had noticed I was missing a minute or so before, and in her panic couldn’t decide what to do or which way to look—the ravine behind the house with the more-than-a-creek creek at the bottom, the ditch near the blind turn in the road that everyone took too fast, or call the police in case someone had grabbed me. She was freaking out big time, and says she almost had a relief heart attack when she saw our neighbor holding my hand and slowly coming up the street. Also my mother hadn’t been taking a nap. I was just born to be free!
And every time I was put in the crib, I got out on my own.
We didn’t have A/C then, and in the South it gets somewhat warm, so the screen doors were the only thing keeping us in.
So yes, I think there must be cause for neglect charges. If/when the story about his BAC comes out, I’ll post it too.
The father should not be charged. That’s crazy.
"did you acquire info from another source?"
Kid wasn't out at dawn. Read it again.
My guess is, the cops and the DA don’t believe him. Unless they can prove his story false, the guy should not have been charged because based on his story this was not neglect. I am wondering if he was under the influence because it sounds as if hey had a hard time waking him up. Of course, if they did not do a blood test, we will never know.
I wonder what kind of dog it was. We have a pond in our backyard, and I am scared to death that one of our young kids will follow the dogs into the pond as our labs love to swim in it. I am even more frightened that they will follow them out onto the ice in the winter.
I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old. 2 year old daughter figured out how to defeat the doorknob cover about 6 months ago. She showed the 4 year old and now we are trying to find other knob covers or a way to stop it. My son, at 1 year old, wanted to go outside. So he went to the door and tried to get the lock open, but he couldn’t reach it. So he ran to his room and got his step stool and carried it over to the door, did the bottom lock, and was straining for the top lock when my wife walked out of the kitchen, saw what he was doing, and stopped him. Kids are smart, and there is no way to stop them other than restraints or hovering over them every second of the day.
[Meanwhile, a witness actually saw the kid neck deep in the pond — and merely called 911. The witness knowingly left the kid in danger and waited for a professional rescue team to show up. I call that negligence.]
Excellent point. What a knucklehead this witness was.
oops, not at dawn. ok, anyway, believe me, the press only gets the tip of the iceberg, these reports are confidential
Dogs are wonderful. There are 100 of them from LA shelters on their way right now to the PNW to find new homes.
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