9-Month-Old Had Blood-Alcohol Level Four Times Legal Limit, Police Say

Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2009-07-18 15:49

Story here.

'CARROLLTON, Ga. — Carrollton police found a baby sitter accused of feeding a 9-month-old boy wine, causing his blood-alcohol level to exceed four times the legal limit for an adult.

Carrollton police Sgt. Tony Johnson says authorities have found 40-year-old Tammy Demice Truitt of Carrollton. She was being sought on charges of first-degree cruelty to children and reckless conduct.

Police say Truitt was called to watch the baby and four other children ages 3 to 9 earlier this week when their mother had to leave town to care for a sick relative who has since died.

Doctors said the baby's blood-alcohol content of .33 was considered a life-threatening condition.

Johnson said the baby was released from the hospital on Wednesday and is doing fine.'

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Comments

This is terrible, but not only am I mad at the woman that did this, but I am mad at the mother as well. It says that the woman was the regular sitter for the boy (as well as 4 other children, that's a lot of kids!). I am betting that there were signs that this woman was an unfit sitter and the mom just ignored the warning signs or did not even make an effort to learn if the woman was qualified to be a sitter or not.

It does not say if the mother is a single mom or not, but I am betting that she is.

When I first became a single mom, the first thing I learned about other young single moms is that they are desperate for sitters, and they let ANYONE watch their kids. I never did hang around the single mom crowd as I wanted to distance myself from them as much as I could.

I doubt that the baby is 'just fine', as I can't imagine that much alcohol did not affect the brain. The trouble is that you will never know (you can not measure if a child's future IQ has been lowered by an isolated incident). The baby was at a stage for major cognitive development.

I hope the sitter is charged and punished to the fullest extent, but I also believe that the mother shares in some of the blame. It sounds like she left the sitter in charge of 5 kids for an extended period (days?). How capable is the mother in making decisions and watching out for her kids? Doesn't a parent have some responsibility to set high standards and check the qualifications of a sitter?

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Submitted by Kris on Sat, 2009-07-18 22:57

I would give the mother some blame if she knew the sitter was unfit.

I can't blame her if she never saw signs of abuse in the past.

Should she have known better? I guess it depends how one looks at it. Either way, I'm sure she was furious when she found out.

I'll give mom a pass on this one. Who can really anticipate this level of abuse?

This article is a bit short, there's probably much more to the story.

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Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2009-07-18 23:19