For obvious reasons, I can't use this blog to comment often on local happenings that involve kids.
The Darisabel Baez murder, for example, is one instance of a case that I would love to be able to, uh, strongly express my opinions about, but I've gotta leave it alone.
Sunday's two child deaths, however, I just can't leave alone.
One was the drowning of 4-year-old Brent Bathory of Red Lion at Pinchot State Park. The other was the heat stroke death of 15-month-old Cassandra Starr, also of Red Lion, whose parents inadvertently left her in their van for three hours.
After coordinating coverage of both events all day yesterday, I went home last night, played with my kids, gave them baths, read them stories, kissed them too many times and tucked them into bed.
And then I cried.
I sobbed for almost 45 minutes.
I kept picturing Cassie Starr trapped in her car seat in her family's van, crying for mommy or daddy. I kept picturing Brent Bathory looking up from beneath the water, panicking as he tried to breathe.
I can handle adults shooting each other. I can handle politicians sniping, idiots spraying racial graffiti on signs and a guy impaling himself through the leg with a wrought-iron fence. In this line of work, I see graphic stories and photos of pain and suffering from around the world every day.
I can't handle it when it happens to kids, to babies. To the truly innocent among us. I don't understand how or why things such as these happen. In a way, I don't really know if I ever want to understand that.
But today, my heart hurts. I've been sick to my stomach for almost 24 hours now. And a new day of news is just beginning for me.
Don't you think that Jenny kissed her children that night "maybe too much" as well? Who wouldn't be sick at heart over such a tragedy! I just pray it doesn't happen to you or anyone else.