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Tomorrow it will be two
weeks since Jhessye Shockley disappeared from her Arizona home, in what
I'm sure feels like a painful eternity to her mother and family members
who have been using every minute of that time keeping her name in the
news so she can be found. There have been candlelight vigils, a march,
and most recently, Shockley's mom and grandmother did a radio interview
in which more details were revealed of how the little girl with the
sparkling smile was doing before she seemed to vanish into thin air. And
some of the things she said in the interview were downright terrifying.
Not because of any light they shed on what might have befallen her
daughter, but because the circumstances of her disappearance make it
clear that something like this could happen to any one of us moms.
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I feel
really, really remorseful because I should have said things
differently. I think about what I could have done
differently, moving a little slower, I should have said go
out back ... I mean specific because ... at a time like
this, you think about what you should have done. |
Jerice Hunter said in the
interview that on the day her daughter vanished, she was busy running
around doing errands, while her older children (now in the custody of
child protective services) were in the back of the house doing chores.
Hunter explained that she told her daughter to watch TV while she left
the house. She thinks she remembers locking the door, and that her
daughter was safe, but according to the radio interview, now she is not
so sure about anything:
This is exactly the situation my own kids were in just yesterday, when I
was running around trying to get some yard work done. They didn't want
to play outside, so I threw them in front of a half-hour show while I
scurried around with leaves and flower pots -- way out in the back.
Someone could have easily broken a window to get inside. Or they could
have wandered out on their own against my knowledge, opening themselves
up to lord knows what. But did I do the wrong thing? Of course not. And
would I do it again? Of course.
Pending everything this mother has told police is true and we are not
looking at another Casey Anthony here, sometimes a child's disappearance
is completely random. This was not Madeleine McCann where her parents
knowingly left children unsupervised down the street so they could have
dinner with friends. While I understand Jerice Hunter beating herself up
over her decision to leave her daughter at home with her siblings, she
did something that probably thousands of parents do on a daily basis.
Hopefully in a few days, this will all be a moot point and beautiful
Jhessye will be back home safe and sound. It certainly would be nice to
get some good news about a missing child one of these days.
What do you think happened to Jhessye Shockley? |
