Summer is here, and this leads to a lot of people looking for ways to beat the heat. Arguably one of the most common ways for people to cool of is to go swimming. Whether it is at the beach, river, lake, or pool, people love to swim. While some people are okay with traveling to places like pools or rivers, some people would rather have their own private pool for cooling off.
However, installing a full-sized pool is not a cheap endeavor. That alone costs several thousands of dollars, then there are all of the maintenance costs. This is why some people choose to go with more temporary and cheaper options, such as inflatable pools. While these pools are a bit tiny for adults, they can be perfect for children. They are an affordable alternative that don’t require a parent driving their kids somewhere.
This wasn’t the case for one Illinois woman when she got an inflatable pool for her kids. Getting the pool inflated turned into a trip that landed the mother in some very serious trouble with local law enforcement.
How Not to Transport a Pool
A woman from Dixon, Illinois was recently arrested after she made some not-so-great parenting decisions. Things probably started out innocently enough. The weather was hot and her daughters wanted to go swimming. So she gets an inflatable pool. However, she doesn’t have a good way to inflate the pool, so she takes the pool to a friend’s house to get it filled up. Once inflated, the pool doesn’t fit in the car.
This is where the woman made a very terrible decision.
She decided to put the pool on the roof of her car, an Audi Q5. Instead of tying the pool down to keep it from flying away while she drove, she somehow decided to have her daughters sit in the pool on the roof of the car. Needless to say, once people saw someone driving a vehicle with two children on the top of the car, they called the police.
Police officers arrested the woman on multiple charges. She faces two counts of child endangerment, two counts of reckless conduct, and one count of failing to a secure a passenger between the ages of 8 and 16.
There Are Better Ways to Cool Off
Everyone can understand the desire to cool down during the summer months. While the heat can make people do crazy things, most parents would agree that having children ride on the top of a moving vehicle is a very bad idea. Even if it is to help cool off. One wrong move and the woman’s two girls could have wound up seriously hurt, or worse. That risk is not worth a little bit of cooling off.
In this instance, it would have been the few extra bucks to just buy a small air pump, then no one would have ended up in jail.