This is a lousy way to start a Sunday morning, but so be it…

From Law and Crime regarding an incident in Indiana:

…According to a probable cause affidavit, officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department shortly before 11 p.m. on Tuesday responded to a call regarding an injured toddler at the Days Inn located in the 8300 block of Craig Street. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they immediately located a 1-year-old girl who was suffering from what appeared to be a stab wound to the neck.

Emergency medical personnel rushed the child to the Riley Hospital for Children… the child was initially admitted to the facility in critical condition but was later upgraded to stable condition.

The child’s mother…told investigators that [her 32-year-old sister, Sharon Key] called her at about 10 a.m. that morning and asked if she could stay with her at the Days Inn. Key was dropped off at the hotel later that morning and drank alcohol for “most of the day.” At about 10:30 p.m. that evening, the sisters went to Burger King and arrived back at the hotel…

The mother said she laid her daughter down on her stomach atop the bed closest to the window and went into the bathroom to give her son a bath. A short while later, the mother said she heard “loud noises from the bedroom so she walked out and saw that [Key] was holding a knife in her hand and [her daughter] was bloody and screaming on the bed.” Key [said] “it was an accident” as the mother grabbed a towel and wrapped it around the wound on the back left side of her daughter’s head and applied pressure before calling 911. …after she called 911,[the mother] turned around and saw [her sister] “walking down the hallway towards the exit.” ….Officers found Sharon Key hiding in some bushes near the hotel and placed her under arrest…[She] allegedly said that her pit bull had taken the chicken sandwich she got at Burger King and eaten it. Key then became “mad” and…went after the dog with her knife. The dog… jumped on the bed where the [baby] was [lying]…In an attempt to stab the dog, Key allegedly said that she missed, accidentally hitting her niece instead of the animal.

Observations…

• What is the rational, fair, compassionate reaction to this story? Whatever it is, I confess; it eludes me.
• Nothing in any of the news stories I have read about this nauseating incident focuses appropriately on the fact that the mother, Sharon Key’s sister, allowed Key “who has been in and out of jail more than 20 times over the last decade… she pleaded guilty to stabbing a woman with a box cutter during a fight at a gas station in 2020 [and has]  struggled with drug and alcohol addiction and mental health issues for years” to stay in a motel room with the mother’s one-year-old infant, drink all day, be left alone with the infant, and to bring her pit bull along with her. The mother is unfit to care for a child. To be blunt, she is a reckless, irresponsible fool. The chances of that baby growing up to be a law-abiding, responsible, productive citizen are vanishingly slim, if she can survive to adulthood at all.
• Is one ethically obligated to welcome a family member like Key into one’s residence? I think one is ethically obligated not to, if there are children involved.
• If, as easily could have happened, the pit bull had reacted to the stress of being attacked by Key by harming the baby, it would have been reported as another “vicious pit bull mauls child.” No dog of any breed should be left in a small space with a one-year-old, and that rule is magnified when the “adult” in the room is a drunken moron like Sharon Key.
• How much of the behavior and horrible decision-making of Key and her sister can or should be attributed to “systemic racism”? What kind of public policies can help such dysfunctional individuals—and protect the rest of society from the damage they do?
• If Gavin Newsom’s reparations task force got its way (it won’t), a Sharon Key equivalent would be given $223,200. How much damage would Sharon Key do with that money? It would probably kill her.
• Key and her sister vote (Most states allow convicted felons to vote now—that’s nice). How many American are there like them around the nation, without the ability to make basic life decisions competently, unsocialized, never imbued with basic values of civilized living, unable to cope with any situation without resorting to violence or flight? Millions, presumably. Many millions. Are the numbers of such destructive members of society declining, or increasing as a percentage of the population?
• At what point to they make creating and nurturing a fair, safe, and just society impossible?

I’m going back to bed.