This might be the saddest story GamePolitics has ever covered.
Toledo's Channel 13 News reports that a 24-year-old man has plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the drowning deaths of his 10-month-old twins. Gregg Kleinmark of Fostoria, Ohio left the babies in a bathtub for at least a half-hour while played an unspecified video game and caught a smoke.
The man's wife, Rachael Kleinmark, has since filed for divorce and obtained a protection order against her husband. Gregg Kleinmark, wracked by guilt and remorse, has tried to commit suicide twice since the deaths of the twins. He told Channel 13 he visits their graves every day.
"I messed up and it's going to haunt me for the rest of my life," he said.
Kleinmark will be sentenced in January.
- Game Politics, 2005-11-22
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1 comment:
It's only stupid until it goes wrong as they say. But in my opinion, there are some things that are stupid regardless of whether they go wrong or not, leaving your children alone in the bath being one of them. You can drown in an inch of water.
Kleinmark clearly never intended for his children to die, he's obviously dying inside himself and I don't think there'd be many who'd deny that. But leaving your children unattended to play a video game? There's just no defending that. Child protection isn't just something that social workers do, it's a deep, fierce almost wild feeling inside a parent, the feeling that nothing is more important than your child's safety.
Kleinmark probably did have that feeling. This probably was just the worst, most stupid error in judgement he ever made, not any malicious intent. But there doesn't have to be malicious intent for children to die.
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