Penalty for jaywalking

The FreeRangeKids mom reports:

The Atlanta mom who was convicted of “vehicular manslaughter” after her 4-year-old wriggled away from her and was killed by a drunk driver, does not have to do jail time. While she could have been sent away for three years, she will instead do a year of probation and perform 40 hours of community service. She also has been offered the option of another trial.

The driver, meantime, already did six months in jail and was released in October. He will serve the remained of his five-year sentence on probation, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

I did not know that an African-American mom in Atlanta could be convicted of “vehicular manslaughter” because her kid was jaywalking after getting off a bus at a busstop. I thought that vehicular manslaughter meant driving a vehicle and killing someone, not being a pedestrian and seeing your kid killed by a drunk hit-and-run driver.