Mother May Be Jailed For Dropping Her Son Off At A Six Flags Park
She dropped her 11 year old son off at the front gate of Six Flags Elitch Gardens and then left for the day. When she came back at 10pm he wasn't there and she called police:
DENVER -- A woman who dropped off her 11-year-old son at an amusement park faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for violating a municipal code.
Charlotte Nadine Chavez, 28, was charged Monday with wrongs to minors under a law designed to protect children from abandonment, city officials said. The charge is similar to a ticket and is handled by the city attorney's office.
On Saturday, Chavez dropped her son off at downtown's Six Flags Elitch Gardens, where he was meeting friends. She returned to pick him up at 10 p.m. and called police about two hours later after he failed to show up.
"He's never done this before, that's why I kind of freaked out," Chavez told Denver station KCNC-TV. "I love my son. I didn't just go drop him off."
The boy had spent the night at the house of a friend's grandmother and was found at the amusement park the next day by an off-duty police officer.
Chavez was charged because investigators discovered she had left the boy unsupervised at the park several times before, Det. Virginia Lopez said. Lopez said she didn't think police had ever charged anybody under the code.
"The mother needed to be given a wake up call that you can't always dismiss adult supervision," Lopez said.
City Attorney Cole Finegan said the law does not specify at what age it would be appropriate to leave a child unsupervised. The municipal code covers minors under the age of 18.
"It's a policy to ensure that you don't have people abandoning their children or placing them in danger and that there is some accountability,' Finegan said.
There was no phone number available for Chavez.
People dropping their kids off at amusement parks (instead of getting a babysitter) is a problem for all parks, but it seems to happen at Six Flags most often.
