After a Detroit woman was charged in the death of her 2 children when she left in a car on a hot day, a state lawmaker is working to increase the penalties in child-abandonment cases.
Rep. Mike Kowall, R-White Lake, began developing legislation to increase sentencing guidelines after hearing a judge’s July 10 decision to lessen the woman’s charge from felony murder to involuntary manslaughter.
Tarajee Shaheer Maynor, 25, is on trial for allegedly leaving her 10-month-old daughter and 3-year-old son in a car for more than three hours June 28 while getting her hair done. The children died in the vehicle.
“I am sure we all would like to believe this is an isolated instance of colossal stupidity or, at worst, a mother’s total disregard for her children,” Kowall said. “But there seem to be more and more reports coming in from across the nation of parents doing harm to their children.”
Kowall said he hopes to pattern the legislation on similar laws in other states.
Janette Fennell is director of the California-based KIDS ‘N CARS, a nonprofit group against leaving unattended children in or around cars.
Fennell said the representative should be more concerned with passing a law against leaving children in vehicles than with increasing sentences.
“There needs to be a financial penalty,” she said. “We need to put laws on the books that are preventative.”
In California, residents are charged $100 for leaving a child in a car, and that’s only if the child is not hurt, Fennell said. From the collected fines, 70 percent goes back to the counties to run public awareness campaigns.
“It’s analogous to the seat-belt laws,” she said. “When a law was passed and people realized they could get a ticket and pay money, guess what? People started buckling up.
“We want to change dangerous behavior.”
Michigan Rep. Gloria Schermesser, D-Lincoln Park, introduced a measure in February 2001 requiring a similar fine, but the bill failed to make it out of committee.
MSU police Officer Anne Stahl said Kowall’s bill could help raise public awareness, but probably couldn’t prevent future occurrences.
“For most people, it’s just a run-in, convenience-type thing,” she said.
“People don’t want to take the five minutes to remove a 3-year-old from a car seat just to go in the gas station to pay for $10 of gas.”
Frank Vandervort, program manager for the Michigan Child Welfare Law Resource Center, said he agrees stiffening sentences would not be preventative.
“If you take the recent cases, this is not a person who’s thinking, ‘Gee, what are the ramifications if I leave my children in the car?’” he said. “By and large, these are not cases where someone intends to kill a child.
“They’re just being thoughtless.”
Kowall said this legislation would ensure justice is served and said he hopes to introduce the bill in the House within the next few weeks.
“There have numerous accounts of children being left in cars with dreadful results,” he said. “In Michigan, we must send the message that such actions are intolerable and will be met with severe consequences.”
