By now I’m sure you heard the tragic news of the two-year-old boy, who fell nearly 30 feet from a Staples Center luxury suite, while his parents viewed just-taken digital photos of their energetic tot.
Despite earlier reports, Los Angeles police now say that the boy plunged 28 feet from the high-rise glass enclosed suite, rather than 50 feet.
Details schmetails. The fact remains that an innocent child lost his life while crawling over the top of a glass partition.
Why?
Well, according to every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane, who has access to the Internet, the boy died because of… parental neglect.
Officials say the boy’s parents admitted that they were looking at digital photos they had just taken of their son when they lost track of him and he somehow fell out of the suite.
According to reports, the boy, Lucas Anthony Tang, had been playing around in the luxury skybox during the Lakers/Golden State Warriors game Sunday night. At some point, police say Tang’s parents noticed he was gone and started to look for him.
I’ll spare you the details of how the boy was found, as they are pretty gruesome. My point in blogging about this horrific tragedy is that all eyes have now turned toward the boys parents.
It’s true that little Lucas’ death is being investigated by the LAPD’s abused-child unit, but that is standard practice in situations like these and officials say it does not necessarily mean a crime has been committed.
Still, many people on the web have been brutal in blaming the Tangs for neglecting to keep their eyes focused on their son, rather than on newly snapped photos of him.
I’m not condoning their actions, but c’mon people, their kid is dead. I’m pretty sure the pain and guilt they are feeling right now is immeasurable.
Still, in the face of someone else’s tragedy comes a litany of childhood “experts” basking in their 15 minutes of fame on cable news networks from coast-to-coast running their lips about child negligence and the like.
Interestingly, I would venture to guess that some of the same people chanting “child neglect” probably have taken their eyes off their kids at some point, but as providence would have it, their kid survived. Such was not the case with the Tangs.
So why add to their nightmare by spewing hate over the airwaves and on the Internet?
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