Life will never be same, says mom who left daughter in hot car

The 2-year-old died after
accidentally being left strapped in her car seat.

CINCINNATI (AP) — The mother of a toddler who died in an overheated car says she is eager to get back to work as an assistant principal at a middle school.

Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby has been on paid leave since her 2-year-old daughter died while strapped to her car seat last month, and school officials have not decided whether she will be allowed to return.

“Live for the positive and work through negative, that’s what I’ve done every day at that job,” Nesselroad-Slaby said in an interview published Friday. “If they would let me, I’d love to go back.”

Nesselroad-Slaby, 40, said she was shattered when she learned that she had left her youngest daughter in her car on a day when the temperature reached nearly 100 degrees. The windows on the car were up.

“No one can ever imagine what it’s like to pull your baby out of the car like that,” she said. “I knew she was gone. My life will never be the same.”

Nesselroad-Slaby’s comments came in an interview with The Community Press published Friday by the suburban newspaper’s sister publication, The Cincinnati Enquirer.

It was her first public statement since the death of her daughter Aug. 23. A message seeking additional comment was left at her home.

Ruled an accident

Cecilia Slaby was left in the back seat of her mother’s sport utility vehicle for nearly eight hours before a colleague at Glen Este Middle School, about 20 miles east of Cincinnati, told Nesselroad-Slaby that she noticed the child in the car.

Clermont County Prosecutor Don White announced last week that Nesselroad-Slaby will not be charged with any crime because her actions were the result of an accident and not reckless conduct as defined by Ohio law.

White said Thursday he has asked a state legislator to propose changes to the law to make it possible to charge someone if a child accidentally left in a car is seriously injured or dies.

Two attorneys in his office are drafting a bill White plans to ask the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association to endorse. A message seeking more information was left Friday for White.

“I don’t know how you punish somebody for something that was an accident,” Nesselroad-Slaby said of the proposal. “A law is to prevent something, but you can’t prevent something that’s an accident.”

Barry Wilford, president of the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said reducing the legal requirement for prosecution from recklessness to negligence in cases of accidents would expose much of the population to prosecution.

“Criminal law has historically recognized that everyone makes mistakes and unintended consequences result from those,” Wilford said. “Generally, we don’t send people to prison for that.”

Mother’s actions

In trying to explain events leading up to the death of Cecilia, Nesselroad-Slaby said she felt under pressure juggling her duties as mother and assistant principal.

“I felt like I had to be super-mom and super-administrator,” she said.

That particular morning was chaotic, and later, “I talked to people at lunch that day about my kids, and it didn’t even click” that her daughter was in the vehicle, Nesselroad-Slaby said.

Nesselroad-Slaby said that before she left home that morning, she put Cecilia in the car seat, then stopped to buy doughnuts for a staff meeting instead of dropping Cecilia off at a baby sitter’s house as usual.

She placed the doughnuts in the cargo area via a hatchback, and she did not see Cecilia then or when she unloaded them, she said.

Nesselroad-Slaby said she hasn’t forgiven herself.

“I know it was an accident. I know it was a mistake,” she said. “But as a mother, it’s something you never forget. Mothers want to protect their children.”