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.
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For…several…HOURS
I know it’s horrifying. This isn’t a momentary lapse there’s no defence for it. It’s so bad I’m wondering if it’s deliberate
Yeah when it’s the parent who does it, it’s usually because they’re completely exhausted from trying to tend to the baby and… Tragic.
But this is a person in the clock…?
I mean idk I’d like to know more about this person’s general wellbeing/state. Are they working 3 jobs? Dealing with loss or something? Or was this just a day at work?
Yep or they’re just abusive/neglectful parents. Surely the staff member must have told colleagues they’d collected the kids? You don’t just do it on a whim, there’s procedures, laws and policies in place so managers must have known. And NONE of them realised the child was in the car?
The whole domain of foster care, CPS/CYF offices, and adoptions is a huge and tragic world that exists all around us but is invisible to most people.
Almost anybody who works in that world is in the same situation as jobs like teachers and game developers where passionate people are aggressively exploited by the business drones. But they have to deal with sadder higher stakes while getting even worse pay and nowhere near the resources they need. So then they become victims of the system too.
And we all know that here in the US at least, our population does not give a fuuuuuuck about living children breathing air outside wombs. And when they are poor and “urban?” Forget about it.
I can hear conservative distant relatives now: “Sounds like his baby mama should have taken better care of him!” (Of course with the term “baby mama” shoehorned in where it doesn’t fit in order to make sure the sentence ends with an air of racism and dehumanization of an innocent child)
Workers contracted? Independent contractors are allowed to have custody of children? That’s psychotic.
Privatizing everything possible so the maximum number of shitbags enjoy the grift is a repugger wet dream.
Sounds like that should be illegal. You would at least hope it is but we will sub contract anything.
Alabama…
You’ve got the rest of the union to help you along … What’s going wrong?
Reconstruction 2: This time we finish the job
Give us a minute and we’ll have the deets. I’ll bring the cole slaw.
Remember to take your antibiotics to the end of the course, people.
This is fucking infuriating. Pure rage.
I remember being in a car too long around the age of 5/6. I’m middle aged, I still remember due to the mild trauma.
Fuck. This poor kid died suffering, crying, screaming. Until he probably passed out due to exhaustion and dehydration.
FUCK.
Those involved deserve prison. Long sentences.
yea ideally not just the contracted worker, anyone involved in setting up such a soulless shit piece of a system
Let’s not forget that this was after he had his entire concept of safety and security shattered due to being taken away from his family.
This involved have never deserved the air they breathe.
Wow. CPS takes your kid away, and promptly proves that they aren’t capable of being a safe guardian either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
Raised by wolves
Hessian wolf-children[19]: 15–7 [20] (1304, 1341 and 1344) lived with the Eurasian wolf in the forests of Hesse:
- The first boy (1304) was taken by wolves at age 3 and found when 7 or 8 by Benedictine monks, the wolves having cared for him by “surrounding him in cold weather, and fed him the best meat from the hunt.” He was later sent to the court of Prince Henry, and became accustomed to human society but said he preferred the wolves.[21]
Frankly, Alabama, I think that you need to up your child-rearing game to at least wolf-level.
The fact CPS is part of the Department of Human Resources seems about on par for Alabama
deleted by creator
I thought that might be the case so I googled a handful of states and they were all Departments of Human Services
Yeah, I deleted my comment right after I sent it because I had realized I’d misremembered it being Resources instead of Services. Didn’t think anyone would’ve seen it that quickly, haha
Haha. There might be a lag in federation between instances.
According to the article the woman picked him up from daycare, went to a supervised visit with the father, then ran errands with K.J. still in the backseat for an hour instead of bringing him back to daycare, then went home and left him for 5 hours still strapped in the backseat and was only made aware he was still there when the daycare called to see why he hadn’t been returned.
How the hell do you forgot you have child in a car? That has to be a drug situation or some kind of mental impairment.
It can happen to anyone, according to research. I can’t fathom the guilt someone must feel over such a horrific accident.
How the hell do you forgot you have child in a car?
This situation aside, quite easily. Especially if not your own, you don’t drive kids places often, are exhausted or feeling unwell, have too much other stuff getting overwhelming, and of course the kid being nice and quiet. Possibly also just leaving the kid there for a short time at first, and then forgetting, which would be the irresponsible way under these conditions (heat, closed windows, no escape).
So the family managed to at least keep him alive for 3 years, the state takes him and he’s dead after a few hours. This isn’t going to go well for anybody. Poor kid.
If I lived in Alabama and CPS tried to take my child away, I would rather die protecting him.
Exactly. Even if the parents are unsafe for the kid, the government’s just proved that it’s even worse. Good luck trying to get people to give up their kids voluntarily.
It’s not just Alabama.
Georgia has repeatedly failed my kids by not preventing them from being abused (obviously not by me)
This country has repeatedly proven itself to just not care about people, especially kids and the elderly. It’s depressing and horrifying and monstrous. Guess we can add that to the pile of depravity.
Being abused while in CPS custody, though?
Several hours? Unbelievable! JFC!
Send the guy to prison. Term length doesn’t matter.
A few hours in a car should do.
Someone needs to be hanged for this
https://www.findlaw.com/state/alabama-law/alabama-capital-punishment-laws.html
Methods of Execution Allowed in Alabama
Lethal injection is the primary method of execution allowed in Alabama. Also, the state allows the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method.
Looks like you’re out of luck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_in_the_United_States
The hanging of Billy Bailey is likely to be the final hanging in the United States, considering that all three of the states that maintained hanging as a secondary method of execution alongside lethal injection after the 1976 restoration of the death penalty have now abolished executions. Delaware’s Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be in violation of their state constitution in 2016,[20] Washington abolished executions in 2018,[21] and New Hampshire abolished executions in 2019.[22] However, the last person on death row in the three states is Michael K. Addison in New Hampshire, convicted in 2008 of the 2006 murder of Michael Briggs, an on-duty police officer. Should the state carry out Addison’s execution, the method could be hanging if lethal injection was found unconstitutional or inefficient, or if he chooses to be executed by hanging.
When the CPS isn’t CPSing
Funny how they go around removing children from their families, but do not actually run foster homes or orphanages. Yet they get away with identifying as a “protection” agency.
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.
