We’ve all been in this situation: You park your car in a public space, and when you come back after buying your groceries or whatever, you discover that cars have parked so close to you, you can’t get the doors open. This situation calls for creativity: In the case of an SUV, it usually involves climbing through the back hatch, a move that’s annoying and a little undignified, but you do it, curse the inconsiderate drivers who blocked you, then move on. But in Florida, they do things differently — a woman there is facing charges after tasking her 9-year-old with backing their vehicle out of a tight spot.
Predictably, this did not go well. The kid crashed the car.
WFTS-TV in Tampa Bay reports that the incident happened Wednesday night. Surveillance video shared by police in New Port Richey, Fla., show the 40-year-old Pasco, Fla., woman coaching the child on what to do though the driver’s window. Either the child shimmied in through the door when the woman couldn’t, or crawled in through the back hatch when the woman wouldn’t. The video shows plenty of space on the passenger side of the vehicle, so if she didn’t want to crawl through the back, she could have climbed over the center console.
You can see that the child has the driver’s seat run way up in order to reach the pedals. But there’s no substitute for experience, and the coaching didn’t work — the Kia Sorento accelerates out of the spot, dragging the woman with it. The car hit a building and caused “substantial damage,” police said. Officers said she admitted having the child drive due to the “confined parking situation.”
The child was unhurt; no word on if the woman was injured, though when the Kia turns as it leaves the parking spot, she’s lucky she wasn’t crushed between vehicles.
She’s being charged with child neglect and allowing an unauthorized person to drive.
