Mom not charged for dumping disabled daughter at bar
Lynn Cameron (Caryville Police Department)
Abandoning a child who needs help is never right, but it’s not always illegal.
A Chicago-area woman who drove to Tennessee to dump off her mentally disabled 19-year-old daughter will not be charged, police said Tuesday in The Knoxville News Sentinel.
Police in the tiny town of Caryville had tried since June 28 to figure out the identity of the young woman. A break in the case came 10 days later when a Chicago-area resident recognized the daughter on a missing persons website and alerted authorities, who contacted the mom – Eva Cameron, 45, of Algonquin, Ill.
The mom traveled back to Tennessee to speak to police, not to pick up her daughter, Lynn Cameron, who has the mental capacity of a toddler and could not identify herself or her mother.
“[The mom] said that she did not want her, that she couldn’t take care of her and that she wasn’t going to take her back to Illinois,” said Caryville police Assistant Chief Stephanie Smith in The Chicago Tribune.
“She let her out to use the bathroom and drove away,” Smith said Tuesday. “She said she just couldn’t handle her anymore.”
Cameron, who has another mentally disabled child, cannot be charged because the daughter she abandoned is legally an adult.
Cameron told The Northwest Herald in suburban Chicago that she drove her daughter to Tennessee because it has the “No. 1 health care system in the United States of America” and she wanted the best for her child. She also said her church directed her there because it is a more Baptist area.
Tuesday, the daughter became an official ward of the state of Tennessee.
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155 comments Add your comment
Diana
July 11th, 2012
4:00 pm
I feel sorry for both of them. The mother shouldn’t be expected to still provide such intensive care to a child who is 19 years old. That is unreasonable. I’ve personally seen animals rebuff their young from nursing once the parent feels they are too old, and humans are animals after all. I’m sure the mother is exhausted and tired of dealing with someone who will never be more mature than a toddler. It’s a sad situation for everyone, Mom, daughter, and state/taxpayers.
bishop long
July 11th, 2012
4:05 pm
This is a very sad story………………but the church told her to do it. Damn, the hell with church!
Spring-Fresh
July 11th, 2012
4:10 pm
Tammt, How dare you sit up and make jokes about this humanbeing. I guarantee you are nothing nice to look at.
Jesus Christ crushes perverted NWO, DBMs
July 11th, 2012
4:11 pm
Now you understand why we believe that black women are in left field when they lend support to their “right to choose”
They and others are unconsciously giving credence to the elite’s right to choose whether we live or die.
Amen?
And?
July 11th, 2012
4:19 pm
Turns out she dropped her off at a bar with NO money and NO identification. What a horrible human being.
mel
July 11th, 2012
4:27 pm
I will absolutely judge this woman. How can you “care” for a living human being for 19 years and think the best way to make her life easier is to simply throw her away. Yeah..in a bar…because nothing bad ever happends to people there. And “at least she didn’t kill her” SERIOUSLY!! This is one of the most obscene things EVER. No, I don’t know what it is like to be responsible for a handicapped child but I do know what it is to have compassion. I understand being at the end of your rope…ASK FOR HELP! This is a living, feeling person. I have seen more people get upset about dumping their pets.. What is wrong with the world when someone can do this and have people stick up for her? No, she does not get a pass with this. Her daughter is mentally a child. But I guess sense she is legally an “adult” what she did was ok. Are you kidding?!?!?! I was firends with someone in school whose sister was a 22 year old but she had the mental capacity of a 9 year old. There is no way in the world would her mother have done this. And she was a single mother at that. That is the key word…MOTHER….some people just shouldn’t be mothers. Do the world a favor and stop reproducing if you are just going to dispose of your children.
mel
July 11th, 2012
4:30 pm
And the best she could would have done would have been to place her in a SAFE environment! Not at some bar 600 miles from home..
Brett
July 11th, 2012
4:45 pm
Isn’t there a better way to turn a developmentally disabled adult to the care of the state than dropping her off at a bar in Tennessee without warning? My Lord.
Annie
July 11th, 2012
4:49 pm
This is sad, but the daughter is better off away from her nutty mother. Not everyone is equipped to handle children who have special needs (or children, period), but there was a better way to get help. There are agencies who could have helped her get her daughter placed in an adult facility, so she didn’t have to dump her. Anything could have happened to her, so thankfully she’s alright.
Did ya wonder?
July 11th, 2012
4:51 pm
Calm down Mel.
Go adopt a 19 year ol;d with a toddlers brain. Then you can shout your self-righteous indignation in ALL CAPS!