Couple leave 2 year old alone for trip to NY from SC. How long is a round trip from SC to NY?

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

what's not clear... how long them expected to be away . if they planned to drive right back... how long would the trip be?

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While the parents were in New York, their child was left alone in their South Carolina apartment. Exactly a week ago is when this whole situation began. An unnamed witness said that the child’s father sent a text saying that he was in New York for business. After that, the apartment management did a check on the apartment, but were unable to reach anyone. When they entered the apartment, they found the baby in the living room, laying on a bed.

Fortunately, the only problem the child had was a dirty diaper. According to the police, the baby woke up and reached for a water bottle, which was empty. Eventually, the father did call the apartment complex, according to police reports. They said the father called and said he left the apartment at 6 am, saying he was “only a few states away.” After that, he said he thought he left the child with the mother. It was later discovered the child’s mother was with the father. As a result, both parents were arrested.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/south-carolina-couple-arrested-for-leaving-two-year-old-home-alone-while-they-traveled-to-new-york/ar-AA14uKKU

[Skittles]

1. "only a few states away?

say WHAT?!?!

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

3. east coast got those little states, I'm wondering if they planned to be gone a few hours

too long to leave kid but curious about the state of mind to drive off leaving a two year old. for a few hours? or a day?

[yardwork]

4. Google says at least 10 hours each way.

Depending on where they were in SC and where they were going in NY, it could be much more.

South Carolina isn't right next to New York.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

6. whoa!! with stops for gas and such, 24 hour trip at least!!

[wnylib]

32. When I was 16, my family drove from

northwestern PA to Charleston, SC. It took us 2 days of driving in the daytime, but we took the time to drive through the Skyline Drive in VA on the way. Then stayed overnight at Winchester, VA. Drove the rest of the way starting next morning.

I stayed a couple months in SC with my brother and his wife and planned on flying home. But due to an airline strike, I took a Grehound bus home. Took 2 days.

[Skittles]

34. yeah OK, living in Texas distorts images of distance

but still, 2yrs old, you cannot be even a few HOUSES away

[Joinfortmill]

13. It's a 13 or 14 hour drive one way. It's child endangerment.

[Effete Snob]

31. It's maybe 5 to 10 years at this point

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

45. someone mentioned the possibility that they flew.. so maybe fewer hours.

[COL Mustard]

28. Insanity, profanity, mendacity.....

And a couple of other small states like intoxication and recidivism.

[phylny]

2. What a bunch of sick idiots.

I'm glad the apartment manager checked.

[elleng]

5. IDIOTS.

South Carolina is a little over 700 miles away. an 11-hour drive. Depending of course on where in NY and SC.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. It's A Minimum of 9&1/2

Of actual driving averaging 7 mph above the limit. Since they'd have to stop to get gas at least twice & eating, it's 20 hours minimum.
More than likely closer to 23.
And the kid is TWO!!!!

[RKP5637]

7. Some people absolutely should not have kids!!! n/t

[japple]

15. They probably never planned on this one. Poor little kid will probably

be shuffled thru the foster care system, which is abysmal no matter what state you're in. There are wonderful foster families out there, but so few and far between.

[Laffy Kat]

8. There is something so fundamentally wrong with both these parents...

They should never regain custody of this child; I don't care how many parenting classes they attend. JFC.

[iluvtennis]

21. + agree. n/t

[Freethinker65]

9. A 2 year old is really not a baby, but still way too young to be left home alone for any time.

[Demsrule86]

16. A two year old is still a baby.

Jesus, what were these idiotic parents thinking?

[iluvtennis]

22. Yep, 2-year old is totally dependent on parents/adult caretakers for alll their needs. n/t

[ShazzieB]

36. Yes, a 2 year old is still a baby

The closer they are to 3, the less completely helpless they are, but even then, they're absolutely not capable of caring for themselves. This is serious child endangerment right here.

I'm dying to know what their excuse was for running off like that. If there was some reason Dad absolutely HAD to go to New York, he should have gone by himself, OR they should have taken the kid with them. It's not that hard! We took several trips with my daughter when she was small, and we managed just fine. It's not always convenient having to take care of the needs of a little one when traveling, but hardly anything about being a parent is EVER "convenient"!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

55. Nobody told them that a kid is not a house plant

[Genki Hikari]

56. IKR?

I took my kiddo on a flight when he was about 2 mos old. He cried for a bit, then settled down. That was a business trip, and I had to take him with me because his local babysitter had the flu, and his dad was already out of town on military business, too. Fortunately, we had family to help watch him at my destination.

Took multiple car trips from the Dakotas to CA or back home to visit family in various nether regions of Podunkistan.

Once, I drove from the Dakotas to Mississippi and back with the kid when he was barely 2. By myself. By then, I was an old pro at long car trips with a young'un in tow.

[NH Ethylene]

23. Worse. Mobile enough to get into some very dangerous situations.

Only two states away? Two ROOMS away is too far for a small toddler.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

26. that's what I was thinking.

[ShazzieB]

37. Ugh, yes!

[Genki Hikari]

57. No kidding.

I wouldn't trust what my kid could get up to in his room by himself unless he was asleep.

And even then...!

[Joinfortmill]

11. Horrible

[Ohioboy]

12. What is wrong with people's brains these days

I swear people are losing their minds. There have always been dumb people, but it sure seems like it's worse than it's ever been. Have we as a society flushed too many mind altering chemicals down our toilets to the point where said chemicals are coming back in our drinking water? It boggles the mind!

[Jedi Guy]

53. Like that old joke says...

Let's just take the warning labels off of everything and let the problem sort itself out.

[littlewolf]

14. please tell me that they found

another family member to raise this child
these two should be striped of parental rights.

[Joinfortmill]

17. Agree

[paleotn]

18. Unbelievable.

[Ford_Prefect]

19. It doesn't sound as though they were going to come back at all...

Reckless Endangerment, Child Abuse, could be murder.

[cornball 24]

20. When my three sons, Irish triplets, were tucked in for the night in a 1400 square ft. house, i

would occasionally sit outside on the front steps. I would head back inside after a little while so they wouldn't be alone. These people are disgusting! Animals take better care of their offspring.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

24. Some people should never be parents.

Fucking no excuse for that shit,NONE!

[mollie8]

25. Unbelievable

They should both face mandatory sterilization

[Rural_Progressive]

27. With the fluky weather that happens this time of year

they could have found themselves unable to get back to SC for days.

[dsc]

29. I am closer than SC to NY as I live in eastern NC. It is a 9 to 10 hour trip to NYC for me and I am

a minimum of an hour and a half from SC.

[cayugafalls]

30. Weed is legal, were they going there to buy, because they seem baked out of their minds...

[OldBaldy1701E]

33. Now I will bet anyone that, even with this on their record...

That they would be approved to be foster or adoptive parents LONG before most states would approve myself, a gay male in a monogamous relationship for over twenty years, not to mention being married for almost 19.

[ColinC]

35. Leaving a 2 year old alone for one minute is unfathomable

[JI7]

38. Sometimes in these type of stories there are questions of money. But these fools could afford

to fly out . They could easily have paid for a babysitter .

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

42. you raise a good point... did they fly? I assumed they drove.

[JI7]

47. I guess I assumed they flew out. But even if they were driving

that still costs money and maybe even more so than flying.

To me it seems like the parents wanted to have some fun and enjoy the nightlife or other things they couldn't do with a child.

If it really was about business why couldn't they take the child with them ?

[dflprincess]

39. You don't leave a 2 year old alone to make a trip to the grocery store

These parents are idiots.

[Iggo]

40. You don't leave a 2 year old to make a trip to the garage.

At least (I hope) this stunt removed them from the kid’s life.

[womanofthehills]

41. I bet they have left this toddler alone lots of times before

Since a newborn.

[vanlassie]

44. And who wrote this about it:

“Fortunately, the only problem the child had was a dirty diaper. According to the police, the baby woke up and reached for a water bottle, which was empty.”

The Only Problem? Are you kidding?

That kid already has two HUGE problems.

[Ilsa]

43. We stopped leaving my mother-in-law home alone overnight when she was 77.

She had mild dementia, but we couldn't take a chance on her getting confused in the evenings (sundowning) and wandering off, leaving the house unlocked, or burning it down. As of two years ago, we stopped leaving her alone for any amount of time during the day.

I hope the parents have brothers or sisters who can take the child instead of him being placed in the foster care system.

I hope the child grows up to be as smart as Matilda.

[3catwoman3]

46. This is why parenting...

...should be a licensed profession.

[roamer65]

49. +1000

[andym]

48. By air Charelston, SC is about 2 hours from NYC

So the parents at best left their kid for a minimum 4 hours if they had turned around immediately, assuming they flew.

[electric_blue68]

50. What th Hell is the Matter With These People ("parents") !

[Duppers]

51. They should be imprisoned...

And sterilized, since they're totally unfit to be parents ever again!! Seriously.

[DFW]

52. This is so far beyond unacceptable as to defy description.

I wouldn't eliminate any punishment for this. Sterilization, the child placed with a foster family that really cares for it, and serious jail time for the parents, as their action would have turned into homicide if the child had not been discovered in time.

As a contrast, one time, about 30 years ago, my wife went to vote here in Germany. Our town had a computer meltdown, and had somehow moved her residence to München (Munich), down in Bavaria, at the other end of Germany. The polling place refused to let her vote because of it. She has never lived in Munich in her life. She showed them her driver's license and ID, but they said, no, our computer says you live in Munich, so you can't vote here. She was getting more than a little angry (German "civil" servants enjoy god-like status, and are assumed--by themselves, at least--to have Papal infallibility).

Finally, she told them to look up our two daughters, aged 5 and 3 at the time, and see where their residence was. Sure enough, our daughters were registered at our real house. I didn't yet have German residence, so I wasn't on their computer. My wife then said she was calling the police, as the voting officials were accusing her of child abandonment. Suddenly, they decided to let her vote. If there is one thing German "civil" servants fear more than a comet striking them, it's being demonstrably wrong.

The aftermath was that our city was agreeable to "moving" my wife "back" to our town outside Düsseldorf, but was either unwilling or unable to cancel their fictitious "previous" residence that they said she had in Munich (we never even found out where!).

[Jedi Guy]

54. I can't help but wonder...

Were people always this idiotic and we just didn't hear about it as much or are people getting dumber and dumber as time rolls on? It really does seem like the latter and human evolution has come to a complete standstill. It's like there are idiot scientists coming up with new and innovative ways of being stupid.

[Genki Hikari]

58. It's like domestic abuse and autism/autism spectrum

Those were always around, but we're hearing more about them because people talk more openly about them now. Plus, the media landscape has a much broader and deeper reach than it used to.

I remember being shocked when not only a friend's dad hauled off and punched his wife in the face right in front of his kids and me, but also when I went to my mother in distress and said we needed to call the police. Only to be told that nothing would be done, because idiots all around us believed that women were to be submissive to their husbands in all things. So if she was getting beaten, people would say she deserved it. Nothing would be done.

I had never seen anyone hit a spouse before that day, or even knew such a thing existed. Kids getting a butt-whooping, yeah, but spouses, never, But that happened in the mid-70s, before Christina Crawford's book blew the doors wide open about the extent of domestic abuse all around us.

I will say this: Plenty about being XX in this world had scared me and angered me before that day, but I had never felt so terrified and alone as a female as I did when my mother had to explain that particular reality to me. Swore for the longest time that I would never get married if it meant some jerk could beat the crap out of me, and he would get away with it because he had a gawd-given right to do that.

[Jedi Guy]

59. I had pretty much the same experience with domestic violence.

My dad never raised his voice to me or my mom, let alone raised a hand in anger, so to me that was just... normal behavior, how things are supposed to be. I was staying the night at a friend's house when his parents got into an argument and his dad slapped his mom. I was absolutely stunned and had no idea how to react, but he just shut down. Even though it was "normal", it still caused deep distress in him because he didn't know how to handle it.

I've been angry at my wife plenty of times, but it has never, ever occurred to me to make it physical. When we were having a very heated argument, she shoved me backwards by pushing her hands against my chest while yelling at me. My response to that was, "Do not ever put hands on me in anger again or we're done." You don't hit anyone, let alone someone you claim to love.

Men who abuse women and/or children are the lowest form of life on the planet. I'm sorry you had that experience and it affected you so deeply. But some of us guys out here are on your side.

[Mysterian]

60. Jail time for both parents is called for

They are fortunate the child didn't find some way to injure his/herself.