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Police won't charge mother for trying to save burned baby
Updated: 3:12 p.m. ET May 2, 2005

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - A Vermont woman won’t face criminal charges for leading police on a high-speed chase, because she was rushing her burned baby to the hospital.

She will get a traffic ticket, though.

Vermont State Police say the woman has been issued a civil ticket for failing to obey a police officer.

A trooper attempted to pull her over but she ignored his lights and sirens. Eventually, the trooper escorted her to the hospital.

Police received reports she was traveling as fast as 90 to 100 miles-per-hour.

Her nine-month-old son was burned by steam from a fallen iron. He suffered second-degree burns to his hand and foot.



This leads to the question, would you stop or keep on going? What is the usual officer response to situations like this? You hear horror stories like the woman that was pulled over while taking her hub to the hospital for a heart attack only to have the officer ticket her for speeding and follow her to the hospital to make sure she kept to the speed limit. Her husband died.

That is really a hard situation. Instinct would tell me to keep going, but there is also the chance that the officer could assist you in getting to the hospital in a fast and safe manner rather than you trying to drive that fast alone and risk getting in an accident. However, what if the officer is an ass like the story you posted above. Ugh, hard choices.

In a situation where the officer refuses to escort you to the hosiptal at a high rate of speed when it's a matter of life or death... take for instance the cop who allowed the guy [having a heart attack] to die... well that cop should be charged with manslaughter and be sent to prison. Using his authority to essentally cause the death of a person is no different than you yanking the nitro pills out of the hands of a person with the onset of a heart attack and watching them die. If YOU did that you'd be charged, tried and probably convicted... the cops should be subjected to the same if not more so because of the authority they wield.

I wouldn't stop, and if I got a ticket I would call the news and turn it into a media circus like that woman did. Eventually, the charges will be dropped so the police department can save face.

I also wouldn't stop. If the cop got on my ass at the hospital, I would completely ignore him/her until the person I was with was in the hands of the doctor. Then if the cop was still on me, I would probably give him/her a piece of my mind and walk away. If the cop decided to make a big deal of it, just as you said. I would goto the media and make it as big a story as possible and make sure the perticular cops name was plastered in as many news articals as possible.

There is a large difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. We know traffic laws are there for our protection, but if the cop cant see that breaking those laws in that instance was the right thing to do then he needs to find a new profession. What really gets me though is that, the cop that would write that ticket is probably the same on that drives around at 80 all day, uses his badge to get out of his own tickets and couldn't care less about the law when it comes to himself.

I don't trust people so i'd keep going until i got to the hospital then whatever they want to do to me i'd come along peacefuly. Then i'd tell the media like Eziekial said.

I would keep going...if me and Johnny Law need to have a disscussion concerning a pair of hand cuffs at the hospitol fine by me. However at that time I would try to form up a media circus that would make Micheal Jacksons trial look like a 16 year old in trafic court for speeding.

It's easy for me to be rational and critical from this vantage point, but, frankly, she overreacted.
Second degree burns to extremities, while critical, are not necessarily life-threatening, even to an infant (no matter how loudly they bawl). Her reaction was not an appropriate response to her situation.

She should have called EMS right off, and if there's no EMS in her neck of the woods, she shouldn't have driven so wrecklessly. She should have pulled over first thing, alerted the officers to her emergency, and gotten their assistance. I doubt they would have refused.

As it is, emergency vehicles are involved in tons of accidents, even with their training, lights, horns, and sirens. It's extremely fortunate that she didn't cause/ become involved in much more serious accidents.

You expect a woman to think rationally when her child has been injured?

Man, you have too much faith in the opposite sex.

And you, too little understanding.

It's easy to look back and say...'they're only second degree burns' but when something like that happens to an infant you tend to react first and think later. Infant skin is a lot more delicate and something you or I might shake off could be potentially life threatening. Also, if the burn completely surrounds one of the affected limbs it puts pressure on the blood cells which could even lead to tissue death.

Infection would kill an infant, burns get infected easily.

I dont like confrontation. I dont like to be in the spotlight. I would not stop. I would hand my girl over to the doctors, make sure she is ok, then come out, sign my ticket, go to court with a lawyer, have them talk to the judge, get it written off. No need for media to be involved.

She deserves the ticket for driving so recklessly and endangering the lives of other people.

Well from my house to any hospital, it would be highway driving. I would not be going any faster than the tards on their crotch rockets flying past me at 90.

Have a child, Mindia. Have your child get seriously burned (I, personally, cant tell the difference between 2nd and 3rd burns, plus burns keep developing over time, plus infection etc) and then try to think rationally. Hell I drove the baby to the ER because she threw up a lot and then cried like we cut her feet off. It was nothing. I cant imagine her actually getting hurt and then driving the normal 60 and stopping at red lights, not cutting corners through parking lots and such.

Darcler wrote:Well from my house to any hospital, it would be highway driving. I would not be going any faster than the tards on their crotch rockets flying past me at 90.

Have a child, Mindia. Have your child get seriously burned (I, personally, cant tell the difference between 2nd and 3rd burns, plus burns keep developing over time, plus infection etc) and then try to think rationally. Hell I drove the baby to the ER because she threw up a lot and then cried like we cut her feet off. It was nothing. I cant imagine her actually getting hurt and then driving the normal 60 and stopping at red lights, not cutting corners through parking lots and such.

To me this is the exact same scenario as the retard who thinks he has to drive 100 mph to get his pregnant wife to the hopital while endangering everybody else in his path because only he, his wife, and his future baby are the only thing that matters in the world.

If I was the judge... the ticket stays. And I would furthermore instruct her to take driver safety classes.

Again, get a woman to sleep with you, knock her up, have her go into labor and think rationally. If it was your wife, of course the only thing that would matter at THAT TIME would be her, your soon to be born baby and their safety. You wouldnt notice anyone else on the road.


I could live with driver safety courses as long as I got my burned baby to the ER.

If I were a jugde, I would find a way to make cops pay double fines on traffic violations and make sure that the rules are inforced on them. I have seen far to many cops drive 60+ in 40mph zones just to get to their fav coffee shop.

There is also a very big difference between driving over the speedlimit and truely being a danger to other people on the road. If the drivers are driving in a truely recless manner then they shoudl be fined. An example of this would be driving through red light at a busy intersection at a high rate of speed.

If there is no one comming in either direction at an intersection, at a red light. If you hve an emergency I do not think you should be fined for running the light.

Darcler wrote:Have a child, Mindia. Have your child get seriously burned (I, personally, cant tell the difference between 2nd and 3rd burns, plus burns keep developing over time, plus infection etc) and then try to think rationally. Hell I drove the baby to the ER because she threw up a lot and then cried like we cut her feet off. It was nothing. I cant imagine her actually getting hurt and then driving the normal 60 and stopping at red lights, not cutting corners through parking lots and such.

If you've ever seen third degree burns you will never mistake them for anything else. The smell will also stay with you for a long time. A buddy of mine couldn't eat steak for a long time after a situation that resulted in someone else getting third degree burns.

Concern for a child is understandable and normal, but it's not an excuse to jeapordize someone else's safety. We don't really know if this was the case though, as doing 90 on an eight lane highway isn't the same as barrelling through a school zone at the same speed.

There is no link in this post to read more, but if it wasnt during a time of rush hour, I could easily do 100 on i30 if fancy struck me, I would be a 'danger' to no one but myself then. It also doesnt say HOW she drove "recklessly". Gidans example is a good one, but something like running on a curb in order to turn right, I did that in my moms truck all the time. Didnt use her turn signal? Ruh Roh.

I would not stop, hands down. I would drive fast if a member of my family needed to get to the hospital fast. My hazards would be on, if a cop did decide to pull up behind me, I'd hopefully use my cell to call the local LEC to let them know whats goin on, or 911 whatever works.

Get to the hospital the fastest and safest I can, get them to a doctor, then sign my ticket and sit in the waiting room. I believe that if I get a viable ticket for running a red light or whatever, I would plead my case and let the judge decide.

They'd have to get the spike strips or use the pivot manuver to stop me, it would not be voluntary item.

That was the complete article.

Tell me something I don't know.

Look, getting treatment sooner is always preferable to later, but it wouldn't have made much difference to her treatment/ outcome whether the accident happened right there in the waiting room of the ED, or if she showed up an hour later.

She endangered lives over a non-life threatening situation. I maintain that she got off light in more ways than one.


I was just about the same age when I managed to scald off the skin from much of my right arm (3rd degree burns, meaning all tissue layers of the skin are involved. Sounds like Xao's buddy had some charring. Smelled just like standing outside of a Burger King, didn't it? Yum yum), the tops of my feet, and anywhere else the boiling hot cup of tea (which I had snagged off of the kitchen table, spilling it on myself) managed to soak through my jumper before my mom could peel it off. Although she had been less than 6 feet away, putting the kettle back on the stove, her back was turned just long enough for me to scoot over in my little roller chair thingy and grab it.

From all I've heard, my parents were plenty freaked out, but they didn't do anything incredibly stupid driving through downtown Rochester trying to get to the hospital. 8 or 9 months old, so that would have been somewhere between December and February... plenty of snow, slush, and ice on the city streets then to contend with too.

Ok then. Nothing said, other than 90-100, was reckless. She may have had her hazaards on, she may have called someone, because I dont think police would stop in the middle of a high speed persuit and say "what the hell, lets play along". They had to know something was wrong to escort her.

What would you, as a mother, do Mart? Stop or keeping flying like a bat outta hell?

I'd still like to know if they have EMS where she lives or not. Also, on a somewhat related note, I'd also like to know how far from the hospital she lives (also, how far did the cops have to chase her)?