A Frazzled Father Who Lost His Head

Originally published by the Tampa Tribune, June 2, 2001

What parent, frustrated by his belligerent, screaming child, would put his 6-year-old out of the car at a ramp on an interstate highway?

A mean one.

No little boy, no matter how bad, should be chastened by abandonment on a busy roadway. That's why Randy Wynne was charged with child neglect.

Wynne said he was merely disciplining his son, who had been fighting with a young neighbor, when he ordered him to get out of the family van at Hillsborough Avenue and Interstate 275 in August 1999. Witnesses said the boy cried hysterically and crossed the interstate exit ramp to follow the van. The witnesses held him until his father's return a short time later.

Wynne's lawyer argued successfully that parents have a right to administer corporal punishment within limits, and a judge dismissed the case.

This week an appellate panel reintroduced sanity into the matter. Wynne "failed to provide his six-year-old child with the supervision necessary to maintain the child's physical and mental health when he abandoned him on the side of Hillsborough Avenue," the court wrote.

"Neither the Legislature nor the courts have ever created a privilege that would allow parents to discipline a child by failing to provide the child with food, nutrition, clothing, shelter, supervision, medicine and medical services that a prudent person would consider essential for the well-being of the child."

The key is supervision. Sensible parents do not deliberately leave little children unsupervised along a busy roadway where they could be hurt or killed. Such an action comes well within the statutory definition of child neglect.

To Wynne's credit, he said that "it's something I wouldn't do again." But he prefers to blame his son. "It was just a case of a kid going nuts," he added.

A kid going nuts? It sounds to us as if it's Daddy who needs the compresses and a nice glass of warm milk.