Nicole Gainey, a mother in Port St. Lucie, Florida was arrested after she allowed her seven-year-old son to walk to the park alone.
“I’m totally dumbfounded by this whole situation,” she said. “Honestly I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I was letting him go play.”
Gainey was arrested last Saturday after she gave her son Dominic permission to walk to a local park half a mile away. Gainey states that it only takes her son about ten minutes to walk to the park, and always carries a mobile phone with him in case of emergencies and to check in with her. During his walk, Dominic was stopped by several people are a public pool to ask where his parents were.
Says the son, “They asked me a couple of questions and I got scared so I ran off to the park and they called the cops.” Dominic was playing in the park unsupervised when police came up to him. Police took him home, where his mother was arrested and charged with child neglect.
Gainey paid nearly $4,000 to be bonded out of jail.
“He just basically kept going over that there’s pedophiles and this and that and basically the park wasn’t safe and he should be there alone.”
She still maintains that her son is mature and responsible enough to go to the park alone during the day. She plans on fighting the felony charge, but won’t allow her son to be allowed to walk alone for fear of being arrested again.
