When a Noordhoek woman helped rescue a toddler from a boiling hot car, she thought she’d done a good deed and helped avoid a tragedy - but the police told her she shouldn’t have moved the child, and the parents threatened to lay a charge of kidnapping against her.
Mother-of-three Julie Smulian said she was “still in shock” at the way things turned out.
She said she and her daughter Kelly, 11, had gone to Longbeach Mall in Noordhoek around 4.40pm on Wednesday and parked in the outdoor parking lot. When they got out of their car they heard a faint crying and realised there was a toddler of about 18 months old in the car next to theirs. The little girl was alone, and the car’s two windows were rolled down only enough to fit your fingers through them.
“She was sweating and crying, and she looked weak,” said Smulian. “Our natural reaction was to get her out of there.”
They had called a security guard, who edged his fingers through the gap and pushed down the window.
In the meantime, both the security control room and Smulian had contacted the Fish Hoek police. Meranwhile the security guard unlocked the door, took the girl out and handed her to Smulian, who took her to the security control room for water.
“We gave her a big mug of water. She drank the whole thing so fast,” said Kelly.
Smulian said the girl’s parents arrived at the control room about 15 minutes after them.
She said she’d had no direct contact with them.
“They didn’t look very worried, as if nothing had happened.”
She said she’d expected the police – who’d arrived an hour after they’d been called – to thank her and the security personnel, or at least to take a statement. Instead, the police told them that they shouldn’t have opened the car themselves, but should have waited for police to arrive.
“They advised me not to lay charges because the parents had said that if I did, they would lay charges of breaking and entering, and kidnapping,” she said.
“In other words, they were just allowed to get away with it.”
The mall’s manager, Lamesa Modak, said the security guards had acted in the best interests of the child.
“Using information available to them at the time, security measured the situation at hand and acted in the assessed immediate best interests of the child. This would always be the first criterion for response in any similar situation.”
Fish Hoek police spokesman Warrant Officer Peter Middleton said no charges or complaints had yet been filed.
He said the police were neutral when it came to such incidents – whether or not someone was charged with negligence in such a case was reliant on a complainant making a statement.
It was common, he said, for transgressors to lay “counter charges”.
“In situations like this, the wellbeing of that child is what is most important. You can’t say, ‘Well, maybe they’ll be back in a few minutes’,” Middleton said.
Joan van Niekerk, Childline SA’s national co-ordinator, said the police should have actively supported the rescuers, and that charges should have been laid.
“The parents should be charged by the police for their negligence. And let them try to lay charges – there would be such a public outcry,” she said.
She said that for anyone finding themselves in a similar situation, their priority should be to rescue the child, doing as little damage to the car as possible. - Sunday Argus