Mom & Daughter arrested in death of 4 mo old-were rushing to hospital, child not buckled in, crashed

[The Straight Story]

BPD arrests grieving women
Mother, daughter accused of endangerment for not putting infant in child seat
BY SHELLIE BRANCO, Californian staff writer
e-mail: [e-mail] | Monday, Feb 26 2007 11:05 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Feb 26 2007 11:10 PM

Bakersfield police Monday afternoon arrested a mother and daughter in the death of a related 4-month-old girl, prompting outrage from the family.

Around 1 p.m., police arrested Brenda Stockman, 46, and her daughter Sandy Stockman, 28, at their residences, according to a Bakersfield Police Department release.

Kayden Stockman, Sandy's daughter and Brenda's granddaughter, was killed in a car accident on Feb. 8 as Brenda was trying to get her daughter to the hospital during an asthma attack. Kayden was not secured in a child safety seat.

Kassie Bettis, Sandy's sister, said she spoke to their mother, Brenda. Brenda was "scared to death because nobody understands this is an accident and they're trying to make her out as a murderer and she's not," Bettis said.

Kayden was on her mother's lap in the back seat of the car when Brenda turned left in front of a pickup, causing a collision, police have said.

http://www.bakersfield.com/619/story/102076.html

[WI_DEM]

1. It was clearly a tragic accident, but then again hopefully a jury/judge will

see it that way and allow the mother and grandmother to go home.

[boobooday]

2. That's harsh

I can imagine that you wouldn't want to put your 4-month old in the car seat if she were in distress, you would want to hold her in your arms.

How totally tragic. One-size-fits-all laws aren't working here.

[aquart]

3. How does one strap in a child having an asthma attack?

Not a rhetorical question. Does anyone have experience with this?

[Freddie Stubbs]

5. Is it any different that strapping in a child who is not having an asthma attack?

:shrug:

[Cassandra]

7. It sounded like it was the child's mother...

having the attack, rather than the child.

[Emit]

16. Yes. It was the mother of the baby who was having an asthma attack. n/t

[rodeodance]

8. keeping the clild calm is of upmost importance. Seems to me that

having the child on her lap trying to calm her would be the way to do it.

gawd. how terrible for all.
Arresting the family members is over the line.

[halobeam]

14. over the line... agreed, yet an understatement.

I think I'd like to see a really good attorney turn charges on the officers.

[halobeam]

11. My son had tracheal stenosis at birth..

I drove from one LOUSY hospital which the ambulance would only take him too, to another hospital who knew his condition, his doctors, etc... he was on my lap in case he needed cpr.. his color was good,etc.. a very long story.. but he was on my lap... no WAY would I have been able to put him in a car seat. sorry. It wasn't emotional, it was risky, physically.

I'm outraged by this arrest. People are MAJOR assholes.

[AngryAmish]

17. Just curious - how did your son get tracheal stenosis?

[halobeam]

54. congenital....born with it...

he had reconstructive surgery of the trachea at Boston Children's Hospital he was about 5 weeks old. ENT surgeon said, he believes many babies that die in crib, are not only due to SIDS but tracheal stenosis too, and if you aren't looking for it, you won't find it. We were VERY lucky. Every time I put him in crib to lay down, he'd cry IMMEDIATELY.. I found out later, that his airway was cut off when laying down. Everyone said, let him cry it out.. but it was EVERYTIME...something was wrong, cuz I'd pick him up and he was vertical, and would sleep instantly. Some said coliky..sp? I said, then he wouldn't sleep in my arms, right? I slept for four weeks in a rocker with him upright against me.. at night... then one day in crib he had labored breathing, I took him to hosp. and nebulizer did nothing, then they gave him Mag Airways Xray and it showed narrowing of trachea 90% from vocal chords and down... wEll they did THAT wrong at a shitty hospital, he went into respiratory arrest, they revived him, and flew him heliported to Boston Children. THEIR mag airways showed the OPPOSITE... 10% narrowing of trachea and they operated right then. We left the hospital a month and a half later. He's now 16.

Xrays can actually lie. Thats an incredible rude awakening to find that out. Anyway, that's the story, aside from a year of apnea monitors and limited exposure to people for the first two years of his life (croup could've killed him) then... the rest all okay.

Whew. haven't told that story in a long time. Another kind of life living in those days. I like this one WAY better. Now he drives me nuts lol.

[LibDemAlways]

4. This is one of those gray areas. As a mother I totally

understand the woman's desire to cradle her child, but on the other hand, no infant should be riding in a car not buckled in an infant seat.

In hindsight I'm sure they wish they had called for an ambulance. And I hope the authorities reconsider this and drop the charges. These women will suffer enough without ever facing the criminal justice system.

On edit - OK, rereading the entire story it's now clear that the child's mother was having the attack. That baby belonged in an infant seat. I feel very bad for the mother and grandmother, but there was no excuse for not properly strapping the infant into a carseat.

[Skidmore]

6. Have you ever seen a child in severe respiratory distress?

My daughter nearly died of an asthma attack once and we were trying to keep her breathing on the way to the hospital emergency room. Believe me the last thing we worried about was the seat belt.

[LibDemAlways]

9. In this instance the mother was having the attack, not

the baby. I know the adults were panicking, but there was no excuse for not fastening the infant into the carseat.

[halobeam]

13. many little babies can't hold their own heads up...

it constricts breathing....

it doesn't mean she did it for emotional reasons (cradling).. it's just a thought, I've had similar experience.

[Sequoia]

48. I remember the old days without seat belts.

No mother was a murder then because of a car accident.

[youngdem]

10. OUTRAGEOUS...COPS ARE FUCKING RETARDS

A child going through an asthma attack should NOT have their chest constrained. It can add to the distress and contribute to a LOC and complications, and can definitely contribute to lower Blood Ox levels.

STUPID cops. STUPID. Charging these women is victimizing them twice.

[skygazer]

19. The baby wasn't having the asthma attack

The baby's mother was.

The child should have been in a safety seat - that said, it sounds like prosecution may be an overzealous tactic here.

[Blue_Tires]

12. virginia law is similar

it is up to the driver of a vehicle to insure that every occupant is buckled....the driver assumes responsibility...

I remember a case when i was in high school: first warm day of spring, and four girls decide to cut class and go to the beach...driver (who only had learner's permit) spins out and crashes, killing two of her friends and maiming the third...i remember the attorneys talked about prosecuting the fact that she didn't make her friends buckle up, but decided she had suffered enough (they got her for reckless driving and without a license)

[hedgehog]

15. It was the mother having the asthma attack, but it is clear that

the adults involved were panicking. I've been Lucky; everyone in my family who gets asthma gets a slow motion attack, ie they slowly lose lung function over several days. I can remember watching one of my kids like a hawk and taking him down to the ER when I could tell he'd reached the limit between bad and very bad. Some asthmatics don't get any warning and suddenly can't breathe. If their inhaler doesn't resolve the situation, panic would be the normal reaction.

[northzax]

18. let's all remember

that the police say there are extenuating circumstances that compelled them to charge them both. who knows what those are, but I would think that there would have to be something significant for charges to be brought in this type of case.

[LeftyMom]

20. Good.

Transporting a child without a safety seat or even a seatbelt is reckless endangerment. It doesn't take ten seconds to buckle a seatbelt, and if time was that short, they should have called 911 rather than try to drive Mom in.

To put it another way, when you have a kid, their safety is more important than your own. That's what being a parent is.

[Mojorabbit]

21. People do not always think straight

in an emergency. There is so little compassion on this board sometimes.

[LeftyMom]

29. Parents don't have the option of being dumb in emergencies.

You do what you've got to do, then you fall to pieces afterward if you must. If you can't keep a level head in an emergency, don't breed.

[Gormy Cuss]

33. Yes, you are right. They don't have the option, but sometimes they do act that way .

Human nature after all -- we're not perfect.

That said, there is probably a lot more to this story. Maybe they never used a car seat for the child. That would be a pretty clear indication that it wasn't the emergency situation that precipitated the choice.

[Zuiderelle]

41. If parents don't ever have an option of being dumb, they must all be perfect saints.

What an idiotic judgment to make.

[Susang]

49. Are we to assume that as a parent, you've done everything perfect?

If we were to examine every little thing you've done since the birth of your child, we wouldn't find one mistake? I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time believing that.

I found your post to be overly harsh and judgmental. Why the vehement attack on these two women?

[LeftyMom]

52. Hell no, I've made mistakes.

I haven't made any potentially deadly, flagrantly illegal ones though. Most parents manage not to do anything that stupid.

Why the vehement attack on these two women? Because they killed a small child through some combination of laziness and stupidity.

[Mojorabbit]

55. You don't know that

they were lazy or stupid. My husband fell off the roof once. Impaled his arm on the iron railing.Blood everywhere. I picked him up with one hand carried him in, stripped him and packed his wound and only then realized what I had done. Adrenalin rush. He weighs a ton more than I do. I luckily did all the right things but was not thinking at all. Autopilot.
I will not judge these women. I was not there.

[Gormy Cuss]

56. Autopilot is right. It is so easy to make bad decisions under such stress.

We all hope that we'll stay level headed and do the right things in the right order, but the fact of the matter is there is no way to know until it happens to you.

[BlueJazz]

50. I think they should just take the Mother out back and shoot her.

...that will teach her....

[Deep13]

24. A couple points.

Driving is faster than waiting for an ambulance.

It takes more than 10 seconds to do all the car seat stuff. A second is forever to someone who can't breathe properly and her mother was her only real chance at that moment.

While it is no longer allowed, it is not reckless to fail to use a car seat. My parents drove me around for 17 years without one as did all parents who had small children before the 1980s.

[LeftyMom]

28. Yes, it is reckless

Car seats save lives. Car accidents are the greatest cause of accidental death in young people. And no, it really does only take ten seconds or so to buckle a kid in in most cases. I can put a thrashing almost six year old in a five point harness in less than a minute, and that involves three points of connection. A booster or a seatbelt alone takes less than ten seconds, and you could even do it after pulling away from the curb (there were two adults in the car, after all) in an emergency.

Driving isn't faster, because the ambulance can treat you on the way. Otherwise, there'd be no point in having them.

[Deep13]

30. reckless

"Main Entry: reck·less
Function: adjective
: characterized by the creation of a substantial and unjustifiable risk to the lives, safety, or rights of others and by a conscious and sometimes wanton and willful disregard for or indifference to that risk that is a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would exercise in like circumstances <a reckless state of mind may be inferred from conduct> —see also involuntary manslaughter at MANSLAUGHTER reckless homicide at HOMICIDE, RECKLESSNESS —compare CARELESS —reck·less·ly adverb

"Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc."

Recklessness is more than mere negligence, it is a conscious disregard of a substantial risk of serious physical injury. The vast majority of automobile rides do not result is collisions. Consequently, the risk on that one emergency ride was very small. Had there been no collision, who you have charged her with child endangerment?

Do you know for a fact that an ambulance would get there quickly and be able to treat that emergency en route? How do you know the hospital is not closer than the ambulance garage. Not every city has two-minute service. How do you know she did NOT call 911 only to give up on them after a few minutes? How do you know dispatch did not tell her just to drive the daughter in herself? How do you know they had $700 for the service? I can tell you from experience, that being sent to collection because you are broke is a big goddamn deal.

[LeftyMom]

42. Then pull away from the curb and buckle the kid as you go.

There's no excuse for transporting a child unsecured. The increased risk of injury and ejection in even a minor accident is substantial, and yes, it absolutely is reckless.

[Zuiderelle]

45. The grandmother was driving... the mother was holding the child.

If she was having a severe asthma attack, I'm sure she wasn't thinking clearly, and might not have even been able to reach over and buckle up the child. How would punishing them as criminals benefit anyone? I'm sure they will be grieving their mistake for the rest of their lives. I hope they don't have to also deal with going through a trial and judgment of the entire world.

Yeah, parents should be responsible, they should know what to do in every circumstance, but they don't. No human being always makes the right choices or always thinks clearly in every situation.

[pitohui]

60. but sandy was dying

you don't fumble w. a baby seat when somebody is dying in front of you, you just don't

where is your heart? where is the d.a.'s heart and brain, for that matter?

you don't allow an adult to be potentially killed or brain-damaged while you anal retentively follow rules that almost always don't matter

the grandmother made a judgment call -- that it's just the right thing to do to take care of an immediate threat to life

i would hope anyone would do the same

[MonkeyFunk]

39. good?

You think she needs to be punished even MORE than she already has?

[slj0101]

46. Nothing reeks of "class" like praising the death of a child.

Regardless of the circumstances.

Whatever you say to retort will probably suck, so end of discussion, as far as I'm concerned.

[LeftyMom]

51. Apparently you can't read.

I wasn't praising the child's death, I was praising the decision to prosecute the idjits that killed her.

[slj0101]

53. You're wrong about that, too.

Given the circumstance of what was happening, I would not go so far as to call the parents "idjits." They made a poor decision, but it was an emergency, and in emergencies, heads are not clear. But I guess judgement calls are always the easiest to make from the comfort of one's computer.

[fishwax]

57. that's a thoroughly bizarre reading of poster's argument

:crazy:

[slj0101]

58. I stood corrected, but I still disagree with the sentiment.

See my response.

[pitohui]

59. the mother was dying

i don't get where they arrested sandy, the mother, she was potentially dying of an asthma attack and probably had no ability to strap anyone into anything

i guess you can make an excuse to arrest the grandmother who was driving, to destroy this family that has already suffered so much, over a moment of panic -- but i would like to see if the small shriveled soul of the prosecutor who made this decision under an electron microscope!

what the hell is wrong w. people? her daughter was dying, and her daughter's baby was a baby and couldn't just be left behind -- so she tried to drive them to the hospital as fast and as best as she could

jeebus

the mother could have been dead of the asthma attack in moments, sure, let's spend that precious time fumbling w. a damn baby seat!

i strongly suspect "extenuating circumstances" is code for d.a. who wants to make a name

people stink

i wonder if this family is black

the people who say "oh just call an ambulance" don't have a clue what ambulances cost these days, you are left very fearful to call them, it's totally a last resort

[Nicole]

64. The OP says the baby wasn't buckled in, the article doesn't say that.

The article the OP posted says she wasn't in a car seat.

From the article I posted in #62:

They said Sandy was suffering an asthma attack at about 8 p.m. on Feb. 8.

When Brenda raced to Sandy's Oildale home to take her to the hospital, they realized the only infant safety seat they had was in a car in another location.

Faced with the emergency, they said, Brenda drove while Sandy strapped herself and the baby into the same seat belt in the back seat. Brenda drove with her hazard lights on and constantly sounded her horn as she tried to get her daughter to the emergency room.

The baby was strapped in. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. :(

[Deep13]

22. Guess some prosecutors just have nothing to do.

:mad:

[ronnykmarshall]

26. Kern County DA Ed Jagels is a fucking pig.

http://leftwingnutjob.blogspot.com/2006/02/dont-expect-justice-in-bakersfieldnot.html

[cwydro]

34. I read a story on him.

He's the one who got a bunch of people locked up for molestation who turned out to be innocent

[ronnykmarshall]

36. And still the son of a bitch gets re-elected.

[AlCzervik]

23. i read through the article and i'm wondering why the Grandmother didn't

call an ambulance instead of driving her daughter to the hospital.

[Deep13]

25. Too slow.

An ambulance, assuming one is available, has to get there and find the place. The grandmother was already there. Also, an ambulance ride costs $700 and a lot of people just don't have it.

[Deep13]

27. Any chance that this is a DWB arrest?

You KNOW how cops can be.

[cwydro]

31. I'm afraid that is what I was thinking.

[Nicole]

61. I don't think so

Here's a pic of the baby.


A family photo of Kayden Stockman.



http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/99047.html

[PVnRT]

32. ...and the Safety Nazi Brigade strikes again

The same people that overreact to pocketknives in high schools and so on, overreact to a tragic accident by arresting someone so they can make a "point" about child safety seats. Watch for a crackdown on enforcing laws that require them now, because of this.

[huskerlaw]

35. The baby was being held by

a woman in the throes of an asthma attack?!

I understand that there was an emergency, but if the woman was that close to death (or unconsciousness, for pete's sake), she definitely shouldn't have been holding the baby.

The grandmother did break the law, the baby did die as a result of her decisions. Life's not always fair. If people could get out of legal scrapes by claiming that they couldn't see any better way to handle a situation at the time, well, I think we can all see how many issues that would cause.

That said, I hope the jury will take the circumstances into consideration if/when they sentence her.

[Deep13]

37. Judges sentence. Juries only decide guilt: yes or no.

Point of fact is all.

[huskerlaw]

40. Hahaha oy.

True enough. Typo on my part.

I hope the JUDGE will take circumstances into account.

[MonkeyFunk]

38. That's nuts...

hopefully a judge or prosecutor will show some common sense and end this.

There are two main reasons for prosecuting someone:

1) Is the person a danger to others? In this case, no.

2) Does the person deserved to be punished? In this case, no court can impose a punishment greater than they've already received.

[ronnykmarshall]

47. The DA is a media slug.

Google Ed Jagels. He's a slime ball fuck. And my home county still votes for this shit.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

43. Clearly this woman needs to spend a long time in prison.

That kill teach her not to kill her baby.

:crazy:

[Fran Kubelik]

44. I do not think we know enough of the circumstances to judge here

For instance, do we know if the car even had an infant seat in it?

It does seem awfully harsh, and I am usually quick to judge anyone who puts children in harms way.

[Nicole]

62. Family says no safety seat was available.

Charges filed in baby's death; family says no safety seat was available

Last Update: Feb 26, 2007 8:09 PM

Posted 2/26/07
BAKERSFIELD - Felony charges have been filed against a mother and grandmother in connection with the traffic death of an infant who was not in a car seat.

Bakersfield police arrested Brenda and Sandy Stockman at their homes this afternoon.

Sandy Stockman was the mother of 4-month-old Kayden Stockman. Brenda is Sandy's mother.

They said Sandy was suffering an asthma attack at about 8 p.m. on Feb. 8.

When Brenda raced to Sandy's Oildale home to take her to the hospital, they realized the only infant safety seat they had was in a car in another location.

Faced with the emergency, they said, Brenda drove while Sandy strapped herself and the baby into the same seat belt in the back seat. Brenda drove with her hazard lights on and constantly sounded her horn as she tried to get her daughter to the emergency room.

As they headed toward Memorial Hospital on 34th Street, they collided with a pickup truck at West Columbus Street and Chester Avenue.

Brenda Stockman was charged with vehicular manslaughter and child endangerment. Sandy Stockman was charged with Child Endangerment.


http://www.kget.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=57166a6c-aba2-4a23-b7bb-6740f32c8d00

[Zuiderelle]

63. Thanks for the follow up. Now it's clear that they actually tried to do the RIGHT thing.

At least they tried. Faced with the same situation, I might have done the same thing.

[Nicole]

65. The OP was misleading where it states "child not buckled in".

The article states no such thing so I went looking for more info.