MARYLAND — Yaakov Reichman surrendered to Baltimore Police this week to face charges of involuntary manslaughter and child neglect after police say he left his 1-year-old son in a hot car last month. But when a 2-year-old girl died under similar circumstances in Silver Spring last year, her father was not charged.
The differing outcomes illustrate how Maryland prosecutors exercise discretion in deciding whether a parent’s failure to remember a child in a vehicle amounts to a crime.
On a regular morning, Reichman, 32, would drop off his son at daycare. But on July 16, according to police reports, he brought his son with him to synagogue and forgot the child inside a hot minivan for five hours. The medical examiner’s office ruled the boy’s death accidental.
Ari Casper, Reichman’s attorney, told The Baltimore Sun in an email Friday: “No one has been more devastated by this tragedy than Mr. Reichman and his family. But tragedy, however profound, is not a substitute for criminal culpability.”
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