Florida State Fair (credit, limo, house)

[bentlebee]

Very loving and caring and very engaged and you kid is running around at the State fair with some thugs....really that doesn't make sense to me.

My son at 14 was at all times at places that I knew where he was....he is now an 18 yr old and a sophomore at USF with a 4.0 gpa and not a nerd or anything close..having fun with his frat brothers and activity involved with many things at his school. Now I don't know where he is all the time since he lives at USF but at age 14, heck yes we knew where he was!

14 years old and being at the fair at night where it seems that since 1990 are issues related to a group of the population is not something where an engaged and involved parent wants their kid to hang out.

If the kid didn't do anything wrong why running away...since that behavior looks more like this was not his first time doing something like this.
I'm sick of people always trying to make excuses instead of saying we didn't look out and could have done more and the first thing they will do is run to a lawyer to sue the cops.
Vigil held for teen who died crossing I-4 after leaving fair

For the people who stated it was a small group...98 young people were mentioned and in the video it clearly showed it was one race and not any other race involved. It seems with all the numbers coming out that by the age of 23 half of the black kids have been involved with criminal things or been in jail, there is an issue that parents may think that they are involved, engaged but not as many other parents are....

That is overal the issue, what parents feel is engaged is clearly not enough! Being a parent means 24/7 and not once a week being there...

Originally Posted by kmarc

I am the last person anyone would ever consider a bleeding heart, but in this case, I think there's more to it than meets the eye. I agree that the parents should not be blaming the sheriff's department, I don't think the sheriff's deputies were prepared at all for this and were just doing their best to cool the situation any way they could. If you were a teen running down the midway, OUT! NOW!

With that said, what I'm gathering from the news reporting is that the parents were indeed loving parents, very engaged with their son and are genuinely devastated by the loss. It's not clear if the kid was there with or without their permission. My sense is that they were probably pretty strict with him and that he was afraid to call them, especially after a brush with the law. Didn't want a whuppin', which is probably what he would have got. But at least he'd still be alive. I don't think the parents expected the sheriff's office to babysit their son, I think they expected they'd get a phone call about him, which is what the police used to do where I grew up. But that wasn't possible under the circumstances and I don't think the police should be blamed.

I occasionally did some pretty stupid stuff when I was a teen, and even as I was doing it, I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. Sometimes kids are like that. It wasn't my parents' failure, it was mine, because they DID teach me right from wrong and they DID tell me not to hang out with the wrong crowd. It wasn't their fault I tried to push the envelope. And the last thing I wanted them to know was if I was doing something they told me not to do.

I don't think these were bad parents by any means. The worst thing I could accuse them of at this point, until I have more information, is being misguided in targeting the sheriff's office for the mistakes their son made.

[mrviking]

Few questions I have. How did the young man arrive at the fair? What happened during the 3-hr gap between being removed from the fair and trying to cross I-4 ?

[seain dublin]

Originally Posted by mrviking

Few questions I have. How did the young man arrive at the fair? What happened during the 3-hr gap between being removed from the fair and trying to cross I-4 ?

Good questions, And how come the caring, loving parents don't seem to know what their son was up to for hours? How about a couple of phone calls at the very least as to what he is up to while there?

And sure sounds like he was on his own as far as getting home regardless of whether he was removed from the fair or not.

These sound like the same type of parents you see crying on the news because their 2yr old is found at the bottom of the pool after 30 minutes, yet you're not supposed to ask why no one noticed the toddler was nowhere to be seen. Or why the child wasn't being watched or why the sliding glass door was left open.

And as far as the police go, this isn't the first year this has happened. They should have been better prepared, and the school district needs to stop with no school on the first day of the fair nonsense.

[BucFan]

went to the fair today - had a decent time, listened to some Eagle-imitation music, checked out the historical Florida village, walked through several displays - noticed several sheriffs'officers strolling around - enjoyable time - look forward to going again next year---most impressed with the young teenagers who were performing - playing violins, cellos, singing patriotic songs ---those thugs on wilding night gave local kids a bad rap - there are thousands if not more of decent kids who do the right thing - the idiots who pulled the stunt on Friday are a very small fractional percentage of the kids growing up in our community

[Roscoe Conkling]

Originally Posted by bentlebee

Very loving and caring and very engaged and you kid is running around at the State fair with some thugs....really that doesn't make sense to me.

My son at 14 was at all times at places that I knew where he was.... Being a parent means 24/7 and not once a week being there...

Couldn't agree more.
Seems to me there's a clear dividing line between parents who keep a close reign on their kids till they're 18, however unpopular that might make them in the eyes of their kids, and those who let them roam wild from a young age.
In my experience the latter invariably prefer the easy way out to allow them to get on with drinking,lazing in front of the TV,or whatever takes their fancy instead of being a good parent.
If my kids wanted to go to the fair with their friends I'd be waiting outside in a car all evening to get them home safely and made sure they 'phoned me at the first sign of trouble.
Kids are an 18-year project and while everyone has sympathy for a parent who loses their child tragically how many times do you read the story and wonder where the heck the parents were ?

[The Villages Guy]

Originally Posted by mrviking

Few questions I have. How did the young man arrive at the fair? What happened during the 3-hr gap between being removed from the fair and trying to cross I-4 ?

Willing to bet he, like most kids, had a cell phone and he could have called called mom or dad for a ride. Just something to think about.

[seain dublin]

Originally Posted by Roscoe Conkling

Couldn't agree more.
Seems to me there's a clear dividing line between parents who keep a close reign on their kids till they're 18, however unpopular that might make them in the eyes of their kids, and those who let them roam wild from a young age.
In my experience the latter invariably prefer the easy way out to allow them to get on with drinking,lazing in front of the TV,or whatever takes their fancy instead of being a good parent.
If my kids wanted to go to the fair with their friends I'd be waiting outside in a car all evening to get them home safely and made sure they 'phoned me at the first sign of trouble.
Kids are an 18-year project and while everyone has sympathy for a parent who loses their child tragically how many times do you read the story and wonder where the heck the parents were ?

Also parents who are really concerned drill into their kids head that regardless of the situation you find yourself in and how angry you think I might be, call me and I will come to you.

This kid either didn't have that support or was in fear of calling the parents due to the police scenario.


No parent should lose a child, but it says a lot about them that they're that quick to file a suit against the police, what's next suing the driver who hit him running across a busy highway at night?

[kmarc]

Saw the latest news on the incident. The po'leece have LOTS of bright and shiny new surveillance equipment and vehicles and monitors and stuff all over the fairgrounds now so all the law-abiding citizens can do the sheeple-shuffle down the midway on candid camera! I hear they have some brand spanking-new "technology" that's being used for the very first time!

Because, as I said before, nothing says family friendly fun like a heavy police presence and the surveillance state. Since we're all so engaged with our kids here, maybe some parents can explain to their children what that's all about when they ask. After all, we're paying for it and it just might be the most fascinating exhibit at the fair. It would make a FANTASTIC teachable moment, parents could explain the history of it and how we got here. Because don't count on the background being taught in school, it's MUCH more important to indoctrinate the kids with all sorts of feel-good drivel. George Orwell was a visionary.

Lol, I wouldn't be caught dead there now.

[BucFan]

I saw a demonstration of the equipment used for that sort of stuff-today, in fact, at the fair, - it's very nonintrusive. You don't see the cameras. They're able to zoom in. Very good stuff for safety of the general population. Besides, that kind of surveillance is what keeps the perps at bay (Ask that punk who killed innocent people/children at the Boston Marathon). I've got no problem being in a public place w/ a lot of people when I know that I'm safe.

[kmarc]

"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither," Benjamin Franklin