Cars Killing More Kids, Study Finds

Rising numbers of children in Los Angeles County are being killed by cars while walking to school, riding bicycles and skateboards, and playing in their driveways in what authorities said are mainly preventable accidents.

The finding is included in a report being released today by the county’s Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, which provides a detailed annual analysis of accidental deaths, youth suicides, abuse cases and children killed by caregivers.

The report found that children killed in auto-pedestrian accidents jumped 37%, from 30 in 2000 to 41 in 2001, the latest year for which data are available. Those were the most such deaths since the agency began collecting data in 1995.

Thirteen children died while crossing the street, 10 were struck by vehicles backing out of driveways, nine were hit when they ran into the street, three were riding bicycles, two were riding skateboards and two were killed when cars jumped the curb onto sidewalks. A 12-year-old washing the inside windows of the family car died when the vehicle began rolling and he jumped out. One baby was delivered alive after his mother was hit by a bus but died of his injuries.

“It points to the need to go back to what we used to do, telling kids to look both ways before they cross the street and drivers to watch out for children playing. I don’t think we emphasize these things anymore,” said the council’s executive director, Deanne Tilton-Durfee. She said another recommendation will be that the state Department of Motor Vehicles issue warnings about child safety and auto-pedestrian accidents to car owners when license plates are renewed.

The report also recorded a rise in youth suicides, from 23 in 2000 to 27 in 2001 and noted a drop in the age of suicide victims. Five youngsters younger than 13 died by their own hands, including a 9-year-old boy who hanged himself with his shoelaces in the bedroom closet of his foster home. In 2000 there were no suicides in this age group.

The 9-year-old represents the youngest suicide victim since the agency began collecting such data in 1988. The boy had a troubled family history with allegations that he had been sexually and physically abused and left untended. He was placed in foster care at the age of 5 and at the time of his death had not seen his mother in four years.

The report found that 35 children in the county were killed by their parents or caretakers in 2001, the same as the previous year and again marking the lowest number of such deaths in the last 14 years. However, the ages of the victims again showed a troubling downward turn and the accounts of their deaths are among the most harrowing in the report.

Sixty-nine percent of the homicide victims were younger than 1, mainly newborns. Over the last 13 years, 45% of the victims had been that age.

Among the cases, 11 involved newborns, including three who were abandoned near trash bins and died of exposure and other factors. Another newborn died when her mother, a 22-year-old nursing student, left her in a hot car on a July day while attending classes. The mother drove the child home and buried her in the backyard. In another case, a 28-year-old mother asphyxiated newborn twin girls, put them into an empty detergent box and placed it in the household trash.

Tilton-Durfee noted that the high number of abandoned newborns came at a time when the state’s Safe Haven Law had not been publicized aggressively. The law allows parents to hand over newborns without penalty at designated locations. “We now have a fairly assertive campaign in place,” said Tilton-Durfee, who cited preliminary 2002 data showing 10 babies safely surrendered and eight who were abandoned and died.

In 2001, three custodial grandparents were held responsible for killing children and two children died at the hands of unrelated foster parents.

On a positive note, the report showed a 2.5% drop in reported neglect and nonfatal abuse cases, from 151,108 in 2000 to 147,352 in 2001.

And parents are hungering for services, said Sandra Guine, a social worker who specialized in child abuse prevention.

“When they go to parenting classes they are shocked that there’s a lot of information about how to be a better parent that they didn’t know about,” Guine said. “With parenting a lot of people still look down from the hip and think you’re supposed to know how to do it.”