The family of 3-year-old Ke’Torrius “K.J.” Starkes Jr. is remembering the little boy as a “joyful,” “brilliant” “happy boy who loved life, who would light up any room that he would enter into.”
The toddler died after he was trapped inside a hot car while in the custody of a worker contracted by the Alabama Department of Human Resources, the state’s child protective services agency, according to the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office and the state Department of Human Resources. The Birmingham Police Department is investigating the death.
K.J. had been left inside a car parked outside a home in Birmingham for several hours during the middle of the day on Tuesday, the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
Mistakes happen. Even the best of parents can forget their child for a few minutes. Not being accustomed to transporting children makes these kinds of mistakes so much more likely.
I don’t blame the person who did this. I blame the system that allowed this situation to occur without any safety checks.
School bus drivers need to walk to the back of the bus before leaving. This is an example of a system that has been improved to prevent simple mistakes from having disastrous consequences again. If the person responsible is fired and nothing else changes, then we’ve learned nothing, and it will happen again.
The system must be improved to prevent this happening again.
It won’t be, because this isn’t just the US (that sucks at that), but Alabama (that sucks at that).
I understand your reasoning, but the system won’t change unless it is demolished and rebuilt.
“Mistakes happen” is not the motto of CPS
If it was, they wouldn’t spend large amounts of money housing taken children when a small amount of money to the family would fix more.