It was not enough that Christine Ruther, 19, broke into a candy store. It wasn’t even the fact that she removed her baby from the stroller to fill it with hot candy. It was the fact that the police were able to follow the candy wrappers to arrest her and her confectionery criminal friends in Cincinnati.
Ruther broke into Minges Candy Store at 1:00 a.m and stole $400 in candy. Following the trial of wrappers, the police arested her and her cohorts, Rebecca Gamble (19), Terrance Ware (18) and Dwight Reed (20). Ruther is also charged with child endangering.
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I want to address a class problem in our society this story brings up. The new trend for weathly couples is to have four or more children, with one partner, (usually the wife if heterosexual), staying home with the children. This is done as a status symbol. This is the moral equivalent of taking your child out of the stoller to make room for candy, only the removal of the children is metaphorical and a beautiful gold star of status and wealth is placed in the stroller instead. Both cases show the ethical status of mud. We desperately need to examine why we have children in this society. If you have a child for no reason, for status or to fulfill some need of your own without a care in the world for the child, then please don’t have children. Having a child is one of the most profound choices one can ever make, but we treat it as something people should just do because they’re supposed to. Given this lack of thought, is there any suprise at the amount of abuse and neglect of children in every class?
If there hadn’t been a child involved, this story would have been an unadulterated delight-a uniquely modern update of Hansel and Gretel! I love the candy wrapper trail. That’s fabulous!
Some people just shouldn’t have children. Maybe the Ohio child care agencies will remove the child from this stupid person and improve the child’s chances of turning out better than her mother.