That didn't play well in the small (population 41,000) eastern Tennessee coal-mining county. "Honestly, they pxxxs me off that somebody would actually do this to a child," Nora Miller told FEN. She's the bar waitress who discovered Lynn Cameron, abandoned with the mental ability of a small child late in the evening June 28.
Miller said the young woman didn't seem frightened when her mother left her. "She came in, went and sat down," she said. "She kind of staggered," said Miller who did not then know Cameron suffers from Cerebral Palsy. "At first I thought she was drunk."
Only later did Miller realize Cameron was severely handicapped and called police. "I wasn't going to let her out where she might get hurt. It's a busy street," said Miller. "My ex-husband's brother has Downe's Syndrome so I get kind of emotional about it," she explained.
Illinois authorities, too, are still trying to determine if Eva Cameron broke the law leaving her daughter, now legally an adult, on her own. There's an Illinois statute that makes it a crime for a parent to abandon an adult disabled child but it's badly written and one section seems to demand a "legal duty" to the child. Local law enforcement officials haven't said they've found one yet that applies to Eva Cameron.
Meanwhile Lynn Cameron is in temporary custody of the Adult Protective Services division of Tennessee's Department of Human Services where a spokesman would only say Friday that the agency is "investigating" her case. The Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel reported Friday that custody was granted only on an "emergency" basis since more than 6,800 Tennessee residenbts are already stacked up waiting for care at the agency.
In the pic: The Big Orange Bar in Caryville, TN, where a developmentally disabled Algonquin woman was abandoned two weeks ago.
1 comment:
The only crime I see is the crime of abandonment of a helpless citizen by the State of Illinois, compounded by the waste of resources and complete lack of empathy by the law enforcement communities of both states in pursuing criminal charges against the mother. Why do you continue to delude yourselves in the belief that this case is unusual, or that by conjuring up criminal liability, you can make it go away? Shame on you, State of Illinois. You should be named State of Hopelessness; State of Despair; State of Abandonment, because this is what you give to your citizens who cannot help themselves.
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