not guilty of child endangerment for leaving child in car while drinking at bar

[Liberal_in_LA]

Fairfax beer quaffer acquitted in child endangerment case

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The jury found Tchelakov not guilty after about five hours of deliberations over two days. Taylor Green, a juror from Novato, said the jury thought Tchelakov made a mistake, but the prosecution had not proved criminal negligence.

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Tchelakov has been in custody since Labor Day, when Fairfax police arrested him at the Iron Springs Pub and Brewery. Authorities said Tchelakov parked outside the restaurant and spent some 45 minutes at the bar, leaving his sleeping baby strapped into a car seat with no water in 80-degree weather.

Tchelakov had a blanket in the window to block the sun, but only one window was opened about a quarter of the way down. When a concerned witness confronted Tchelakov at the bar, where he was on his second beer, he grudgingly went outside, lowered the window slightly more, turned on the fan but not the air conditioning, and left the keys in the ignition while he went back to the bar, according to court testimony.

http://www.marinij.com/westmarin/ci_19107566

[sinkingfeeling]

1. That's awful! How could the jury not see the danger to the baby?

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. Jury said it was a "mistake", not a crime

[aikoaiko]

3. maybe setting up a "a dingo stole my baby" scenario.

Unless there is something very specific about this CA law that wasn't addressed by the prosecution, its stunning that he wasn't convicted.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Wow! No, that's not a mistake. It was a choice. A mistake is when you are so

frazzled or distracted that you somehow forget the baby is in the car at all. This was clearly intentional.