It’s a case that sent shock waves through the parent community: a mom just ran over her 9-year-old son for refusing to attend school one morning.
Many parents feel like their kids are out of control at one time or another. But typically, such a sensation is just mildly lasting. But for some parents, having children that are out of control is the norm. Their kids won’t listen, break the law, and don’t pay any attention to the consequences.
And if you’re feeling like your kids are out of control, there are steps to regain your power. Maintaining authority is important to the child’s well-being—and one of the steps is giving proper discipline, if the child’s behavior seems to get a little worse that’s when you start giving consequences, and an out-of-control child will push back.
However, a mother from Michigan just give the consequences to the extent, that in a horrifying incident, then 36-year-old mom Tiffany Kosakowski just ran over her 9-year-old boy with her SUV outside Chandler Woods Charter Academy.
Now, the 39-year-old Kosakowski pleaded guilty and was with second-degree child abuse and reckless driving causing serious injury.
In a Michigan courtroom where the hearing was located, “It is simply inexcusable what you did,” Kent County Circuit Court Judge Curt Benson told the mother, “Your little boy has suffered terribly,” the judge added, explaining that the rear wheel went over Julian’s “full body, full head.”
It happened in December 2018 in the parking lot of the school where her son attended third grade. Kosakowski was dropping his son Julian off at school, but the boy refused to attend and followed his mother back to her SUV after she dropped him off.
Kosakowski told him to go back inside but the boy still refused and grabbed the door handle of the SUV, and despite that Kosakowski knew her son had continued to walk alongside her SUV as she drove, as she admitted to investigators. Kosakowski hit the gas, but rather than stop, Julian clung to the door for nearly 50 yards before he lost his grip and fell under a back tire, which ran over his head and body, Leaving him breaking bones in his body and fracturing his skull.
However, in a bizarre event, the mother who also “confessed to shifting the steering wheel from left to right, then speeding the vehicle,” according to a court document, as she attempted to shake off his hold, just received a 30-day prison sentence to be served over 15 weekends.
It’s a hard case to hear, but perhaps even harder is knowing that she didn’t get what she should deserve.
John Rodriguez, the boy’s father, claimed he hadn’t seen the boy or his twin sister in five years.
He talked about the last time he saw his kid when he had taken him to a birthday party, and compared that to seeing him in Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital when he was in a coma. “His head covered in wires [and] tubes, and sensors in his mouth and all over his little body,” he said. The father spoke tremblingly as he related the distressing contents of the police report regarding the incident that left his kid critically ill.
But despite the horrific details, many came out in support of the mom with numerous letters of encouragement being sent from those who attend her local church and parents from her son’s school, with the judge who acknowledged the letters.
The judge ruling over her case, said, “Of the 30 people who wrote the letters, I’ll be quite blunt with you – I am not sure all of them would be as supportive, if they, like I, watched the security footage of this incident which is simply inexcusable.”
According to both AJC and MLive, Kosakowski was originally given a 6-month sentence by Benson, but all except the final 30 days were suspended. She was also placed on probation for five years.
In a plea deal, the second-degree child abuse accusation was dropped. At the time of her sentencing, Kosakowski still had custody of her son and was taking care of him and taking him to get treatment.
Well, it’s still hard to believe that this mom only got 15 weekends in jail for this, she knows her son is still gripping in the SUV’s door, but she still has the guts to speed up—harming her child.
For his son, he’s living the rest of his life suffering the consequences of his mother’s actions and fearing for the next dangerous decision she might make, just how traumatic that could be for Julian.
Watch it here: Youtube/13 On Your Side