Sometimes as parents you make impulsive decisions in the moment that look terrible in retrospect, but didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. You lose track of time, choose one option instead of another, or give in to a whim, and in the end, it comes back to bite you. That may have been the case for the young mom from Warren, Michigan, who left her three kids in the car during an impromptu spa treatment and is now facing criminal charges for it.
23-year-old Ericka Campbell apparently had her 11-year-old sister and two little children (aged 3 and 1) with her when she stopped at a private residence in Warren where someone was running a spa out of their home. She left the three kids in the locked car, telling them she would be right back, and headed into the house. But the time ticket by, the temperature outside dropped, and the 11-year-old sister started getting antsy and upset.
In the end, the young girl called the police!
The 11-year-old was concerned because Campbell had said she wouldn’t be long, and it had been an hour already and she showed no sign of coming back. Plus, as the evening got colder and the car wasn’t running, the young girl was worried about the two children. She also later said she didn’t know who else was in the house Campbell had gone into, so she wasn’t comfortable just getting out of the car and knocking on the door. So she solved the problem by calling the cops.
Police officers from the Warren Police Department arrived at the scene, and knocked on the door of the house. The homeowner answered and told them that Campbell was getting a spa treatment from his wife. Officers told the homeowner to tell Campbell that she needed to exit the house immediately and come outside, but she refused, saying she wanted to finish getting her eyebrows done before she left. So an officer entered the house and forcibly removed her from the table where she was lying during the eyebrow procedure.
In the end, Cambell was charged with child abuse!
Officers reached out to CPS, who in turn called Campbell’s mother. The children’s grandmother agreed to take them in, while Campbell herself was carted off to the Macomb County Jail and charged with child abuse. Officers at the scene say Campbell had left her young sister with a cell phone and the car keys. She also said she hadn’t expected the spa treatment to take that long, and she’d assumed if there were any problems her sister would simply knock on the door and let her know. She said she was very sorry.
Like Ericka Campbell, all it takes is one badly thought-out choice, one spur-of-the-moment decision, to land a parent in jail. So if we can give our readers one piece of advice it would be this: think carefully about any decision you make when it comes to your children’s safety and wellbeing! You can’t predict the future, and you can’t take back a moment once it’s happened. However, if you find yourself in trouble because a parenting choice you made didn’t work out, call The Kronzek Firm at 866 766 5245 and get help from our experienced child abuse and neglect defense attorneys!