Parents' responsibilities, kids with lethal means

J

JBR

Senior Member
Location
Southern Canada mtn. valley, tad west of Rockies
The Eathan Crumbley case, and now his parents on trial, stirred a memory of another incident. The one I thought of was very different in particulars, but had the elements of a dangerous situation, and clearly involved parental responsibility (or irresponsibility).

The one I thought of occurred in Canada some years ago and was immediately in the news in this country. It involved a girl, 17 years old, from a race-car-driving family. Kendall Herbert was given parental consent & encouragement to drive a jet car on a drag strip, the vehicle being known to be capable of reaching speeds up around 300mph (490+kmh). The car crashed, Kendall survived, but died in hospital.
Teen driver loses life in jet dragster accident - Autoblog

Kendall Herbert.jpg

The driver & car would only have endangered other people if something had happened in a race, rather than a test run. But...
 

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Intent matters, and I don't guess Kendall's parents meant her to be in a fatal accident. Yes, oldaunt, life is dangerous, as you say. Granted, it's only my opinion, but I'd think it might be unduly dangerous if you send your 17-year-old onto a track with a vehicle capable of going 300.
 

Were the parents ever charged? I read that she was part of an enthusiastic racing family, and that she was a race car driver, and loved it...with a bright future. Maybe her promotion to the jet car was more dangerous, and there could have been a malfunction in the car that caused the ejection.?
 
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The parents lost their daughter. Now they should be charged? To be made into some type of example? I don't think so, no.
 
JBR said:
Intent matters, and I don't guess Kendall's parents meant her to be in a fatal accident. Yes, oldaunt, life is dangerous, as you say. Granted, it's only my opinion, but I'd think it might be unduly dangerous if you send your 17-year-old onto a track with a vehicle capable of going 300.
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Yet you would put your kid in traffic with a vehicle capable of going at least half that.
 
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I can understand worries that the Crumbley case can go too far, depending on who is blaming who for what. Slippery slope.
 
It wasn't my feeling that the parents should be charged. There is a difference between Kendall, the girl driver, and the Crumbley case. Kendall's parents' would have understood that, in all likelihood, only she was in physical danger. And their sense of loss, after she died, would have been terrible.
 
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Paco Dennis said:
Were the parents ever charged? I read that she was part of an enthusiastic racing family, and that she was a race car driver, and loved it...with a bright future. Maybe her promotion to the jet car was more dangerous, and there could have been a malfunction in the car that caused the ejection.?
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I did learn the story from the news, at the time. But I never found out what happened after Kendall died. I don't know if or how the Canadian (or Ontario) criminal code covers that sort of thing... likely it's some grey area. If the code does cover such things in some way, the prosecutor may have felt that the parents had been 'punished' by the grim outcome.
 

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