Erica Ryan's mug shot. She has no prior criminal record.

Witnesses jumped into action after watching a young mother allegedly punch her baby for refusing to eat.

I know, I know. Nobody wants to read a story about a baby getting punched in the face. This might be an exception if only because the crowd reacted so admirably and made me wonder what I’d do if I witnessed the same thing they did.

Would you?

Here’s what happened.

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Babies Vs. Seniors

Riddle me this:  for whom would you be more inclined to give up a seat on the bus?  A stroller-less mom trying to juggle two children or a senior citizen?

A police incident out of Halifax describes how officers were called to settle a fight between six mothers and a bus driver who refused to drive after the moms wouldn’t collapse their strollers.  They chose instead to stand with the strollers folding up the seats at the front of the bus reserved for seniors.

The moms ranged in age from 17 to 25 and had a total of four babies and several toddlers.  24-year-old Mandy Fitzgerald told the Halifax Chronicle-Herald newspaper the bus driver didn’t take kindly to the moms’ me-first attitude, telling the women, ”You can’t do what you want on my bus, this is my office.”

And get this…  Four police cruisers AND transit officials surrounded the bus and created a big traffic mess for more than an hour while they dealt with the “standoff”. Continue reading »

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Did a judge sentence Raquel Nelson to jail?

A Georgia mother who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter after her 4-year-old son was hit and killed by a driver while the family was jaywalking across a 4-lane street in an Atlanta suburb has been sentenced.

Unbelievably, Raquel Nelson, a single, working mother, potentially faced more jail time than the driver who struck and killed her son and then took off.  He later admitted he was the driver and was sentenced to five years in prison, but served only six months. He is serving the remainder of the sentence on probation. Additionally, as Babble’s Stephanie Precourt reports, he admitted to having alcohol and pain meds before driving AND has also previously been convicted of a hit and run.

As if seeing her child die as a result of a hit and run wasn’t bad enough, Nelson, 30, was charged with three misdemeanors — second-degree vehicular homicide, failing to cross at a crosswalk and reckless conduct.  Last week a jury convicted her. Each count carried a potential sentence of one year in jail so Nelson initially faced up to three years in jail  — a sentence six times longer than the time served by the driver that hit her son.

So, what was her sentence?  Did a judge order her to jail?

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Hold on to your seats, kids!

The Boston Herald is reporting that an MBTA bus driver has been suspended for locking a group of “terrified” Boston Latin School students in her bus and then taking them on an angry ride because they kept pushing the stop strip…and wouldn’t stop.

WHDH TV in Boston is reporting that, according to a transit police report, the driver, Audrey Arrington, said students were acting up and falsely pushing the bell to get off. The report goes on to say she ordered a group of kids off the bus randomly in Roxbury (not their regular stop) and then headed for her base, an unfamiliar direction for the kids still on the bus. According to parents commenting on the Herald site, some of the kids who were forced off the bus were 12 and had no money or cell phones to call home.

As for the kids still on the bus, apparently some thought that they were being kidnapped. On the WHDH site, Craig Galvin is quoted as saying that he got a “terrified call from his 13-year-old daughter.” He says: Continue reading »

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If you cringed when you read kids spend seven and a half hours on digital media per day, brace yourself. The Internet School Bus could be coming to a neighborhood near you.

A pilot project in an Arizona school district, the wi-fi zone on wheels got a write-up in the New York Times last week for its innovation. Continue reading »

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We’re a nation of terrified parents. Scared of the Philip Garridos of the world, the faceless man who will come to steal our children right out from under our noses. That’s why the New York Times says we don’t let our kids walk to school anymore.

True enough, but there’s another story out here in the wilderness. Parents aren’t afraid their child is going to be touched by a stranger. They’re afraid he’s going to run them over. Continue reading »

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She was eleven when she disappeared, and her family hasn’t seen their little girl in eighteen years – until now.

A girl last seen eighteen years ago when she left her California home to catch the school bus has reportedly popped up, now twenty-nine and hoping to reconnect with the family who lost her. Continue reading »

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