It’s getting near that time of year when, as difficult as it is to fathom, parents must be warned not to leave their children and, yes, pets, in fatally hot vehicles.
We’re astounded every year when the news of these fatalities are reported. Granted, accidents do happen and we want to believe most parents who suffer such a tragedy did not intentionally leave a child in a life-threatening situation, and we recognize that they will live with the horror resulting from their carelessness for the rest of their days.
But while reading a recent account of infant deaths resulting from parental carelessness or ignorance, another sort of danger was the topic and is one people do not hear of as often as they do about hot vehicle deaths.
That is the occurance of infants dying because their parents had them sleeping with them.
The recent Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article recounted the tragedy of a six-month old Bentonville boy who died of asphyxiation while sleeping between his parents who loved to cuddle with him.
Those parents, 21 and 19, reportedly did not intend to hurt their child but they had smoked marijuana earlier that night. Mixing the immaturity that comes with their ages, the mind-altering substance and ignorance of the danger, produced a profoundly sad, fatal result. The parents, according to the article, are now serving prison sentences for manslaughter.
We learned from the article that, while not receiving the publicity of hot-vehicle deaths, since 2011 charges have been filed in infant sleeping deaths in Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and now Arkansas.
It was shocking to learn from the article that our state has one of the nation’s highest rates of infants who die unexpectedly in their sleep, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1,000 apparently healthy infants died in Arkansas between 1999 and 2015.
A Democrat-Gazette review of 102 cases between 2010 and 2016 found that 93 babies were sleeping in conditions that increased their chances of dying.
We encourage parents in Columbia County to not let such tragedies take young lives here. Heed the advice of John VanWinkle, attorney of one of the parents of the Bentonville baby who died, who reportedly told both parents that baby beds, bassinets and cribs exist to protect infants from such tragedies.
“They’re made,” he said, “for your baby to sleep separately — for this very reason.”