mom leaves kids at McDonald's while having nails done
:blows dust off community: (dang, where is everyone? lol)
full story
NORTON, Ohio -- A mother entered a not guilty plea to two counts of endangering children after leaving her kids at a McDonald's Playplace while she got her nails done.
According a police report filed on the incident, Betty Walters, 53, of Norton, was charged for the June 29 incident after the manager at the restaurant noticed the children playing without an adult in the playground area.
The report says the manager walked up and asked the children where their parents where. The children told police their mother dropped them off to play while she went to a nail appointment at a salon across the street.
Police arrived a short time later and spoke to the children, ages 5 and 10, who did not know their mother's cell phone number, their home phone number or home address. The children told officers their mother had dropped them off at the McDonald's the last time she had a nail appointment, several weeks earlier.
The officers waited with the children until their mother arrived back at the restaurant, approximately 90 minutes after dropping them off.
my thoughts:
-- i DO find it weird that the children supposedly did not know their home address or either phone number, though the article claims mom told them never to give it out. not even to the police or someone else in authority?
-- i am personally halvsies on this. was it not really a smart move? yes. is it worth giving the woman a criminal record for an hour and half appointment across the street and using up the police department's time? not really.
-- maybe it's because i'm from a small town (and according to wikipedia, Norton is even smaller than my town!) but i see parents dropping their kids off for short periods of time at a lot of places (the library until the staff put a stop to it because they were annoying the actual patrons, the pool during open swim hours, the parks--despite what the police chief says and God forbid even the stores...and that's ALL DAY, not just 90 minutes).
i have seen what looks like unsupervised kids at our McDonald's (possible their parents are inside eating, but still) so i wonder if there's more behind this. is the manager paranoid? did some other customer complain repeatedly that the kids were acting up? are other unsupervised kids treated the same way, such as kids of a certain age limit whose parents may allow them to walk/bike/bus to McDonald's for lunch by themselves?
what do you all think?
full story
NORTON, Ohio -- A mother entered a not guilty plea to two counts of endangering children after leaving her kids at a McDonald's Playplace while she got her nails done.
According a police report filed on the incident, Betty Walters, 53, of Norton, was charged for the June 29 incident after the manager at the restaurant noticed the children playing without an adult in the playground area.
The report says the manager walked up and asked the children where their parents where. The children told police their mother dropped them off to play while she went to a nail appointment at a salon across the street.
Police arrived a short time later and spoke to the children, ages 5 and 10, who did not know their mother's cell phone number, their home phone number or home address. The children told officers their mother had dropped them off at the McDonald's the last time she had a nail appointment, several weeks earlier.
The officers waited with the children until their mother arrived back at the restaurant, approximately 90 minutes after dropping them off.
my thoughts:
-- i DO find it weird that the children supposedly did not know their home address or either phone number, though the article claims mom told them never to give it out. not even to the police or someone else in authority?
-- i am personally halvsies on this. was it not really a smart move? yes. is it worth giving the woman a criminal record for an hour and half appointment across the street and using up the police department's time? not really.
-- maybe it's because i'm from a small town (and according to wikipedia, Norton is even smaller than my town!) but i see parents dropping their kids off for short periods of time at a lot of places (the library until the staff put a stop to it because they were annoying the actual patrons, the pool during open swim hours, the parks--despite what the police chief says and God forbid even the stores...and that's ALL DAY, not just 90 minutes).
i have seen what looks like unsupervised kids at our McDonald's (possible their parents are inside eating, but still) so i wonder if there's more behind this. is the manager paranoid? did some other customer complain repeatedly that the kids were acting up? are other unsupervised kids treated the same way, such as kids of a certain age limit whose parents may allow them to walk/bike/bus to McDonald's for lunch by themselves?
what do you all think?