In Jewett City, Connecticut, police are dealing with an all-too-common situation. Two-year-old Wyatt Matteau shot himself in the eye when he played with his father’s gun — left in the open and loaded. His mother Rebecca Matteau warned him before she left the room not to play with the gun because it could cause “bad boo boos.”
The shooting occurred on Auguest 28th while the father Jason Matteau was sleeping and the mother, son, and 3-month old daughter were watching television. Both parents have been arrested for risk of injury to a minor and criminally negligent storage of a firearm.
An uncle had reportedly told the parents two weeks earlier about the need to lock away the gun with children in the house, here.
For the full story, click here.
Gyges,
I don’t however think this is just an instance of a tragedy with no particular person at fault
Nor do I. Which is why I never suggested that.
As I have repeatedly stated, this is clearly a situation of negligence on the part of the parents.
My only point is that parents are daily negligent in bringing up their kids and thus we need caution in meting out harsh punishments when negligence occurs, particularly when there is no plaintiff, other than the state, and a tragic loss has occured.
Negligence is a term associated with accidents. Not intent. There was no malice. There was no intent to do harm. So we need to balance our desire to prevent such things from happening, with our compassion and humanity when dealing with them when they do.
It bothers us all that the child is dead. But I assure you, it bothers the parents more than any of us. And since we cannot help the child, but only the surviving parents, what would be best for them, and society?
To toss them into metal cages to rot like animals? Tear them away from each other in their time of grief?
The loss of a child is the greatest loss their is in this life for most humans and we are ignoring that loss when we suggest tossing them into prison to “teach em”.
The event taught them. What more lesson could they learn?
Take away their rights to ever own a handgun again. Fine them whatever fines go along with improperly securing a gun and as you said, order counseling of some sort, to both ensure they never do this again and to also comfort them in this dark hour of grief, to help them through what is the worst pain they will likely ever fear.
I know you see the compassion part, and that encourages me.
To be comparable to this situation my parents would have to have leave a two year old me with an easily accessible table saw that was plugged in, after having been warned that keep the table saw there was a bad idea with a young child. My Mom also would have had to see me trying to play with the table saw before leaving the room
Well they’d have to leave the door open, then turn their backs.
From what I can glean from the article, the security gate normally kept the child from the parents room. On this particular occasion the gate was down, from what I can gather, because they were all in the room together at one point, where the mother pointed out the danger of the gun to the child (we can mock the word boo boo but its a word a 2 year old understands).
From what I can tell the father either was asleep, or dozed off, and the mother, not realizing the father wasn’t watching the kid or that she had left the gate down when leaving the bedroom, turned her back on the child to go to the bathroom. Then the child apparently walked into the unsecured bedroom, unbeknowngst to the sleeping father and thats when he got his hands on the gun.
Gyges
1, September 22, 2008 at 5:08 pm
CroMM,
I think your analogy with the table saw is very appropriate. My parents had both a gun and a fairly well equipped home shop. The guns were always stored separately from the ammo and the saw was always unplugged and covered when not in use.
Then your parents were Ward and June Cleaver, lol.
Seriously Gyges I don’t know anyone who “unplugs” a table saw in their workshop when not in use. That might have been the norm in your house, but I grew up the son of a Carpenter who had a vast workshop with many tools, including Milling Lathes, Metal Lathes, Drill Presses, Tables saws, etc. No one in our house, or any house I knew unplugged these saws after use.
And even if they had, its easy enough for a two year old to put a plug into a wall socket.
And I would readily argue that your house was the exeception (Hence the Ward Cleaver reference) not the rule. Most dads who have large tools set up do not necessarily unplug them after use. Not in permanent workshops. What they do is take precautions to keep their kids out of those areas until they are old enough, unless they are properly supervised.
CroMM,
I think your analogy with the table saw is very appropriate. My parents had both a gun and a fairly well equipped home shop. The guns were always stored separately from the ammo and the saw was always unplugged and covered when not in use. It’s not a matter of taking basic precautions, it’s a matter of taking precautions that are equivalent to the danger.
To be comparable to this situation my parents would have to have leave a two year old me with an easily accessible table saw that was plugged in, after having been warned that keep the table saw there was a bad idea with a young child. My Mom also would have had to see me trying to play with the table saw before leaving the room.
I do see your point about compassion, and I hope that the judge takes all factors into consideration in the sentencing. I also hope all the family members involved get counseling, especially the parents. I don’t however think this is just an instance of a tragedy with no particular person at fault, this could have been easily avoided with negligible thought and effort on the parents part. There is no great leap required to foresee the outcome of leaving a toddler in the same room as a easily accessible loaded gun that he had been trying to play with.
If however there were laws in place requiring him to have a gun safety lock, or prohibiting storing the gun in a loaded condition, then it is reasonable to levy fines and penalties in accordance with those specific codes.
But tossing two grieving parents into prison over what can only be described as a tragic accident, is cruel beyond any real need and will not serve the parents, the dead child, or the community. These people lost their little boy, and due to their own negligence.
I can’t think of any worse punishment for a parent, nor would I wish one upon them.
Well, thats a good point about the gun. A gun is after all a device intended to do injury, and I was wondering if someone would make that case.
It reminds me of the old Kung Fu episode, where the master has little Kwai Chai build a vase, then, he has a gun (a blunderbuss) in a box with a string on it. He gets little Kaine to pull the string, which discharges the gun and destroys the vase. He does this to show Kaine that a gun is a weapon that destroys.
The problem is, it is still a tool. A gun does not have to kill. A gun can be used as a deterrent to killing. So saying that all loaded guns discharge, is not correct.
Additionally, once more you base your conclusion on the notion that the parents INTENDED the kid to handle the gun.
They did not.
The negligence here was in letting down the barrier which kept the gun safely in the bedroom, out of the reach of the 2 year old.
The child barrier I would argue is a reasonable precaution to keep the child from ever coming into contact with the gun.
A table saw is also a device intended to do damage. Damage to wood, or whatever it comes in contact with. A table saw is a lethal device when misused, and yet most fathers have one.
And they secure that table saw, from their two year olds, by using doors, gates, etc, to keep the child from the area where the saw is located.
If however one day the father left the door unlocked to the workshop, and the kid snuck in when mom wasn’t looking, and made his way to the saw where he proceeded to injure or kill himself, would you also say the father deserved to go to prison?
There was a security gate that was intended to keep the child from the room where the gun was located. The negligence comes in in letting down the gate.
If you’re saying that the very act of having a loaded gun in an apartment with a 2 year old is itself criminal, then you would need to likewise arrest the state officials who licensed the father to have the gun in his home.
If not, and you realize the state permitted the father to have this gun in his home with his 2 year old living there, then it comes down to the question of securing the weapon from the child. The security gate, keeping the kid out of the parents room where the gun was located was designed to do just that. Where they fell short was in leaving the gate down for whatever reason while not attending directly to the child. It was a moment of neglect. Not a pattern. Thus, one could liken this case to a father who neglects to lock the door to his workshop, and his toddler stumbles in and injures himself on a power tool.
Once again, compassion, the new “dirty word” in this country, is in order.
These parents did not intend for their child to hurt himself, or even handle the gun. They just were momentarily negligent in ensuring that. And that is not something that they need to go to prison for.
CroMM,
The reasonable expectation with a loaded gun is that it will go off, and when it goes off that it will do major damage to something. All your analogies fall short based on the fact that none of the activities you list are designed to cause destruction, a gun is.
rafflaw
1, September 21, 2008 at 7:36 am
CMM,
This must be the morning that I disagree with you
ha ha, disagreement is good. It shows we’re still thinking.
As for my analogy to soccer and cheerleading, its spot on. Your statement “every two year old who plays with a loaded gun is going to injure or kill someone” is assuming that the parents gave the kid the gun, or intended him to play with it. They did not.
From the article we learn that there was normally a child security gate between the bedroom and the area the child was allowed to play in. For some reason this gate was down that evening, which is where the negligence comes in.
That they were negligent, even criminally so is not in question. But that they were feloniously so is.
There was no malice, no intent to harm. Just carelessness on the part of two parents who now have to live their entire lives with this tragedy. I am not saying they did nothing wrong, I am suggesting compassion for them, even though they were stupid.
Because we’re all stupid. And we do things every day of our lives.
You say cheerleading done “correctly” is safe.
Bull.
What do you think happens to the human body when its tossed 10 feet into the air. Sure IF the guys catch her just right, then she MAY be fine. But even then she can suffer whiplash, a broken bone, or worse. And the fact is human beings do NOT always perform perfectly every time. In fact we KNOW that they will fail periodically, so the truth is, when we allow a bunch of kids to throw another kid 10 or 12 feet into the air, we’re “gambling” that;
A. They will catch her
B. When they catch her they will catch her exactly right.
C. When they miss, she’ll be uninjured.
No one can assure all those things, so the fact is we are taking a calculated risk.
And what about football, or basket ball?
What do you mean “when not done properly”?
What do you think happens when a bunch of kids run full steam, heads down, wearing helmets, and pile into another kid running away from them? Have you ever played football? Because injuries are not “uncommon”. They’re a regular occurance. Daily even. In fact they keep special trainers on staff for “injuries” because you just CANNOT PLAY FOOTBALL WITHOUT INJURIES. Period. So once more, we are gambling with our kids safety and even their very lives when we allow them to engage in a contact sport like football, or soccer.
In soccer they don’t even get the helmets. What do you think happens to a kids head when another kid kicks a little too high and clubs him in the head with a pair of cleats?
And how about Basketball? How many kids are literally carried off the basketball courts, almost daily? Its not supposed to even be a contact sport, yet injuries of all sorts are a common occurance in basketball, so once again, we are gambling with our kids being injured, and with the severity of those injuries.
And what about just tossing our kid up in the air and catching them? Ever done that with “little Rafflaw”? The fact is kids get paralyzed from such things, because the fact is we are human, and we’re not always going to catch them just right. And then, even when we do, things go wrong.
The fact is we’re talking about degrees here, and these parents took a chance they shouldn’t have taken, no doubt. But we all take chances every day with the lives of our kids, particulary with our public school system and organized sports.
Kids grow up in households with poorly secured loaded guns every day, and only a small percentage of them ever shoot anyone or themselves.
I think a little compassion here is due, thats all. I know parents who have lost children, and its a horrible tragedy beyond the comprehension of those who have not. It breaks them. For life.
Why’d we want to, in their hour of grief, add to that burden, is to me less than compassionate. And less than fair, given our own proclivities to endanger our kids in the “accepted” way.
CMM,
This must be the morning that I disagree with you. These parents weren’t exercising their right to bear arms when they handled the security of that gun foolishly. In my opinion, they were more than negligent, they were criminally negligent, at the least. The right to bear arms has significant responsibilities that these two braniacs simply chose to ignore. Secondly, your analogy to soccer and cherleading being inherently dangerous is all wet. They can be dangerous when not done properly, but every kid who kicks the soccer ball or does a back flip will not be hurt. In the case at hand, every two year old who plays with a loaded gun is going to injure or kill someone.
Shortly before 2-year-old Wyatt Matteau fatally shot himself with his father’s .40-caliber pistol, his mother had warned him that touching the gun meant “bad boo-boos.”
Wyatt had reached for the gun and Rebecca Matteau told him “No!” as she grabbed his hand, according to arrest warrant affidavits.
“Bad boo-boos,” Wyatt repeated to his mother.
Now wouldn’t that be the moment for that blithering idiot of a mother to PUT THE GUN AWAY? SOMEPLACE SAFE? Instead she goes off to the bathroom and leaves it in reach of a baby who has already shown interest in it. Apparently these parents gave a higher priority to keeping a gun loaded and close at hand than they did to the safety of their child.
We always want “someone to pay” in this country, and its why our prisons are over full up. Because we like seeing people punished. Unless of course its ourselves or one of our family. But we sure like seeing other people punished.
And so, we punish the hell out of them.
And our reward?
The dubious honor of being the nation with more of its people in its prisons than any nation on earth.
And its that same attitude, that got us into Iraq. Bush did it, but we allowed it.
Because we wanted someone to pay.
And Bush gave us someone. Someone Arab. Someone we didn’t like. And so we spread rumors about them dancing in the streets on 911, and America said “lets get em”.
When we learn to lose that penal attitude, that vengeful desire to see others suffer for every misfortune in life,.. then we’ll move past all this. But not until.
LindyLou
1, September 20, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Um, Cro, I’m not sure if you’re answering my post, but did you read the part where I talked about the fear the parents must be feeling? And to make the parents live in society without the guns there to buffer their fears?
Yea thats why I parroted you by saying take away their rights to own guns.
I agree that this was a huge blunder of negligence, and these people should never be permitted to own a handgun again. I am just saying making felons out of them, and tossing them into prison is not the answer. We are a penal society, and its by our own hands. We ask for harsh penalties and we get them.
Theres a reason this country has more of its population behind bars than any civilized nation on earth.
😐
And this is it.
Um, Cro, I’m not sure if you’re answering my post, but did you read the part where I talked about the fear the parents must be feeling? And to make the parents live in society without the guns there to buffer their fears?
Kids have to be allowed to take their lumps and bumps and parents must constantly judge whether or not their kids are ready. Parents make mistakes that way, but that does not begin to compare with leaving a loaded semiautomatic within reach of a 2-year-old. That just seems silly to me, but then a lot of cases are won with silly arguments.
Look at it this way.
Our public school system, which parents send their kids too every day, is responsible for countless maimings and deaths due to simple organized sports.
And not just the sports, but the very cheering on of those sports.
How many girls do we hear about paralyzed for life, simply from performing some cheer, or gymnastic routine? Huh? How many?
And how many parapalegics, injuries and deaths has football, basket ball, even baseball and soccer caused to our children? Yet we drag them to the games in our mini vans like an army of Ward Cleavers. In fact, doesn’t Professor Turely take his kids to soccer? Isn’t he “endangering” them?
One could easily argue that the very act of permitting your kids to engage in football is threatening their safety. Yet no ones arresting the coach. And no ones indicting the School System. And no ones hauling off the Parents for sending them there, or encouraging they engage in dangerous team sports.
Negligent? Sure.
Felons?
Absolutely not.
Its important to mention that this was not just a gun being left lying around while the kids played around it.
It was on the fathers nightstand, in the bedroom of the parents, a place the kids didn’t normally play. At 2 years old I can tell you I had never seen the inside of my parents bedroom. And in fact, the proceedings indicate that normally there was a childs security gate to keep the kids out of the bedroom, so it was not as if they intended the child to ever have access to the gun. This particular night, the gate was down, and the wife, apparently just briefly stepped into the bathroom, not thinking, and thats when it happened.
Was she stupid for not putting up the gate? Sure. Maybe she thought the father was awake. I don’t know. But she nonetheless “turned her back” on her child. Which parents do every day in all sorts of circumstances where they probably should not.
And was the father stupid for having a loaded gun on his nightstand? Absolutely. Criminally so? Sure. But “felonious”? I don’t think so. These people are not “felons”. There is no felonious intent. There was no forethought of malice. No intent to harm or be sinister in any way. They were negligent, and due to their negligence they lost their son, something they’ll live with for the rest of their natural lives.
I say charge them with a misdemeanor, revoke their rights to own firearms and send them on their way.
Well I agree they were negligent. Criminally even assuming there were laws in place in their locale. But as for their “society”, what do we know about their neighborhood? There are some dangerous areas of Connecticut too. Were they in one?
I’m not excusing what they did. But I’m also not for tossing two grieving parents into prison for being negligent, even criminally so. I’m not sure what to do here, but I don’t think punishing them beyond revoking their privileges to ever own another gun, is humane.
They lost their son. He’s dead, and it was their fault. While we’re angry they are diraught. This is a pain that will grow with time.
At the end of the day, they didn’t mean to kill their kid. They didn’t want to kill their kid. They just acted foolishly. Negligent. Something we ALL do every day of our lives.
How many of you parents out there have let your kid climb too high one day? Or get too close to a steep area? How many have tossed our kid up in the air and caught him? Given him a taste of beer to try and steer him away from alcohol?
Any of these things could lead to death. Tossing kids is a common thing, and it sometimes ends up badly. Parents are not perfect, and they do stupid things. They were stupid. And they were negligent. And their son lost his life over it. Which is more punishment to a parent as one can imagine. Once a parent loses a child, they will never, ever, ever be the same.
What good will come out of tossing them into a steel cage to rot like animals?
CMM, they weren’t just stupid, they were criminally negligent.
They put their need for weapons above the safety of their children. If they fear society so much that they needed to keep a loaded semiautomatic pistol out in front of the kids, then make them live in that society without their guns.
I’m sorry this happened too Raff, but locking the parents away for life? We seldom do that in premeditated murder cases, and you’d want to do that for merely being negligent.
That the child is dead is tragic. No doubt the greatest anguish is being felt by the parents.
Were they stupid? Sure.
But if we outlaw stupid, we’re going to have 399,999,998 people to lock up in the cell next to theirs.
We all do stupid things. And sometimes people get hurt. Negligence is here no doubt, but to what end? There is no plaintiff other than the state. Who’s to benefit? The childs dead, and thats a tragedy that will haunt this family until the end of their lives.
I’m uncomfortable with the penal society we’ve become. Where every tragedy is compounded with more tragedy of our own making.
Putting away to law abiding citizens because of a stupid move that resulted in the loss of their child is not going to bring that child back, nor will it teach the parents any lessons the childs death hasn’t already taught them.
If I were a judge in such matters, I’d be hard pressed to take two grieving parents, and further add to their grief by seperating and incarcerting them.
Their sons dead. He’s dead because they messed up, and were careless. Its a tragedy that we can’t do anything about. But locking up two otherwise likely good people, would be another tragedy. A tragedy we can do something about, if we want to.
“With these parents being so stupid I would not trust them with the other child or anyone else.”
Rafflaw,
Couldn’t agree with you more. The daughter should have been removed by Child Welfare and the parents charged with a minimum of negligent homicide and criminal child neglect. The stupidity displayed by this couple is such that they need to pay a stiff price, if only to keep them from bringing more children into the world. It boggles my mind to try to understand their behavior.
These parents shouls be put in jail for life! Then another 100 years. I cannot believe how someone who society considers adults, could be this stupid and reckless. This child is dead because of the radical lack of sense in both of these so-called parents. I was schocked that they didn’t have to post any bond after being arrested. With these parents being so stupid I would not trust them with the other child or anyone else. I wouldn’t trust that they would honor the bond and show up after murdering this child. I call it murder because they made the conscious effort over a period of time to take such reckless steps with the gun that their actions amount to murder in my eyes. Wow. This case distubs me.