Mar 13, 2008 5:47 pm US/Central
No Trial For Mom Who Briefly Left Child In Car
As CBS 2 reported first Wednesday, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office had a change of heart, and decided not to prosecute a mother for doing what so many parents do – leaving a child briefly in a car within their sight.
"It's hard to be living 97 days under the scrutiny of being called a child abuser when no child was abused," Ellen "Treffly" Coyne said.
But now, CBS 2's Derrick Blakley reports, any stigma hanging over Coyne has been has been removed after prosecutors dropped charges that she endangered her child.
"We shouldn't have had to fight this hard, this long, in a case where they knew she did nothing wrong," said Coyne's husband, Tim Janecyk.
Last December, Coyne left her 2-year-old daughter, Phobe, locked in her car while her other two children and a neighbor's child dropped $8 in change they had collected in a Salvation Army Kettle.
But when Coyne returned to her car, just 30 feet away, she was arrested.
Crestwood police insist Coyne made the situation worse, refusing to identify the child in the car. Chief Timothy Sulikowski says his officer enforced the law, acting in the best interest of the child.
But surveillence video outside the Crestwood Wal-Mart showed Coyne was out of the car just 3 1/2 minutes.
"And we've stated all along that car was never out of Mrs. Coyne's sight," said her attorney Michelle Forbes.
And Coyne worries, for example, about moms who routinely put their kids in the car and then return shopping carts.
"Could any mother be arrested for that now?" she asked.
After viewing Wal-Mart's videotape, prosecutors agreed there wasn't enough evidence to prove child endangerment.
And Coyne hopes other moms won't be endangered by what she calls overzealous enforcement of a well-intentioned law.
Coyne says she intends to explore whether the language of the law needs to be clarified so other parents don't wind up in the same situation.
