While traveling on a 12-day loop through the West, I read online that a 30-year-old mother from El Dorado was arrested last week after leaving her 2-month-old infant alone in a hot car for about 15 minutes.
Those headlines were a somber reminder of the recent acquittal of Judge Wade Naramore of Hot Springs involving the tragic death of his toddler son, Thomas. That accident happened when the loving father forgot his son was in a rear child's seat for about five hours on a summer's day in 2015.
What appears to make this near-tragedy in El Dorado much different for me is that police say they discovered 44 Xanax pills and marijuana residue inside the woman's vehicle.
She found herself charged with endangering the welfare of a minor and possession of a controlled substance.
A counselor who spoke during the mother's court appearance said she had been in an extensive rehabilitation program in the months before her child's birth.
Considering the circumstances, I'd say this close call could have wound up so much worse.
News reports in El Dorado and this newspaper quoted police saying Jessika Stringfellow had left her infant in the car with the windows closed and no air conditioning last Monday as she shopped in a cell-phone store.
According to the reports, an employee from a nearby store thankfully saw the child and went into the cell-phone store asking if anyone knew the parents. Stringfellow then went outside and brought her baby into the store, still strapped in its car seat.
An off-duty policeman who had been conducting personal business in the store followed when she exited and questioned her about leaving the child.
The mother initially told the officer she'd left her baby with her 76-year-old grandfather in the car but he'd apparently left to find something to eat, according to the news accounts.
But the officer wasn't buying that. He reported that, while he was arranging for an on-duty officer to be sent, Stringfellow admitted that no one else had been with her and she'd left the child when she went shopping.
If true, that only makes this incident all the more troubling. We will wait, as we did in the sad Naramore case, to see whether this mother is convicted or exonerated in court.
Regardless, this provides yet another chilling example (as if we need another) of how easily children can, and do, perish alone in cars, even with outside temperatures in the low 50s. Twenty-eight small children already have died nationwide this year, and 689 since 1998.
I have trouble envisioning nearly 700 children dead from such a preventable cause, don't you? That's larger than many Arkansas towns.
One child car death this year occurred when the external temperature was 71 degrees. Another succumbed at 77 degrees, and a third child died at 52 degrees, according to 2016 tracking of heatstroke deaths of children in vehicles, conducted by San Jose State University.
Fifteen minutes doesn't sound that long. Yet on an August day in South Arkansas, like the day in question, temperatures inside an enclosed car can rise by as many as 25 degrees in just 15 minutes.
Records show the high temperature for El Dorado on Aug. 29 was 94 degrees. The potentially deadly math in this near-tragedy for me is elementary.
I harbor no illusions this is the last time we will read of such catastrophes and near calamities.
That needs to sink in deeply here in our own state for all who transport young children. It can and too often does happen so unexpectedly to people just like you and I.
At least, despite the arrest and some widespread notoriety for this incident, Ms. Stringfellow thankfully still has her child to love, hold and nurture.
Will Arkansas benefit?
Whoa nellie, Bozo! That's my expression of surprise that the Arkansas Wins group managed to gather nearly 100,100 valid signatures to place the question of allowing casinos in Washington, Boone and Miller counties on the November ballot.
They only needed 84,859 legitimate signed supporters.
The three casinos would be regulated by a gubernatorially appointed commission and each would pay our state an 18 percent tax on net gambling receipts.
They also would provide hundreds of jobs and keep the untold thousands now being spent and wagered in casinos of surrounding states within our own borders, which can't possibly be a bad thing.
On my journey, I've seen scores of casinos on Indian lands in New Mexico. And darned near every parking lot is crowded with vehicles, many sporting out-of-state plates. While I'm not endorsing gambling here, I'm overly pragmatic when it comes to preserving every possible dollar for Arkansas.
In the interest of transparency, I've been to Oaklawn, even purchased a lottery scratch-off ticket or two. I've looked and can't seem to find where it's done any additional damage to my health or psyche. I even won $20 once upon a time.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 09/06/2016