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.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
155 comments Add your comment
Kristy
July 11th, 2012
10:47 am
While I agree this is a horrible thing to do, at least she did not kill her like so many other women who can’t handle their children.
TrishaDishaWarEagle
July 11th, 2012
10:50 am
stay classless, tammt
j
July 11th, 2012
10:50 am
i see both sides of the argument but i have to side with one … can you imagine, as a child, stopping for a bathroom stop and then coming out and not seeing your family anywhere? How tragic can that be? Regardless of the situation, there have got to be other ways if you can no longer take care of your child. yes, i may not have walked a mile in her shoes but this is still a terrible way to abandon a child.
Auntie Christ
July 11th, 2012
10:51 am
What if she had the mental capacity of an 11 year old, would it have been all right to abandon her then? At what age equivalent level would it have been okay to abandon her? I ask this because the great state of GA will be executing a 52 year old man next week who has the mental capacity of an 11 year old, in essence killing a child. I am willing to bet that many of the commenters here would say it is reprehensible to abandon an 11 year old, yet would say it is permissible to kill one, in the name of “justice.” Amirite?
Laura
July 11th, 2012
10:52 am
The article said the girl could not either “identify herself or her mother”, so why do you think she would even have the capacity to miss her? She doesn’t even know who she is! Some of you are very naive. Once the girl turned 18, the mother could not get SSDI paid to her, it would go to the girl, unless she had a legal guardian who was willing to be responsible for her or… she had been made a ward of the state, which is exactly what the State of Tennessee did. You cannot possibly even begin to imagine how physically, mentally, and emotionally draining caring for this girl would have been, especially with another disabled child, but some of you are going to find out in due time, whether caring for sick, physically challenged, aging parents or spouses. If this happens to you, let’s see how you feel about it after about 6 months or so. Oh yes, don’t forget the monetary costs that will be involved either. They are going to be staggering, even with Obamacare.
Cmdr. Shepard
July 11th, 2012
10:55 am
They should have checked the mother into the official ward too.
Robert
July 11th, 2012
10:56 am
Directed there by her church? Damn good Christians, promoting abandoning a “child”, regardless of age. Why didnt they do the good “Christian” thing and help the mother?
Didn’t their Lord and Saviour promote charity, kindness, and all those other wonderful Socialist ideas that these people rejected?
JET
July 11th, 2012
10:57 am
Her day will come. Karma has a way of catching up with you. Hope she can handle retribution.
Not even wrong
July 11th, 2012
10:58 am
So can I dump my wife off in Tenn too?
UMrules
July 11th, 2012
10:58 am
This woman downloads defective children and dumps one of them on the state of Tennessee? Well…she must be a godly genius…I’m moving to Tennessee tomorrow.
I too want to be taken care of!