Gambling With the Lives of Children

They prepared for more traffic, extra crime, and gambling addiction.

But officials in Bucks County say that while planning for the 2006 opening of Parx Casino in Bensalem, they never anticipated this.

"One thing that we never expected was for people to leave their kids inside their cars while they went inside to gamble," said Fred Harran, Bensalem's public safety director.

Yet police say that has happened seven times since mid-June outside the sprawling Parx complex, on Street Road. The latest report came Thursday, just hours after state lawmakers announced plans for a bill that would make it a felony to leave children younger than 13 unattended in a vehicle. "Of all the problems we thought about that were going to happen, this is one thing that was probably inconceivable," State Rep. Gene DiGirolamo (R., Bucks) said at a noon news conference Thursday in Bensalem.

Added State Sen. Robert M. Tomlinson (R., Bucks): "We were all shocked when we first heard of these incidents."

They shouldn't have been, some experts and gambling critics say.

"They didn't do their research," said Janette Fennell, founder and president of KidsAndCars.org, a national nonprofit child-safety organization. "There is plenty out there about the fact that kids are left alone in cars at casinos."

"It's amazing to me that legislators are surprised at this stuff," said Paul Boni, a Philadelphia lawyer who has represented anti-casino groups. "You are looking smack into the face of the addiction.

"They are surprised because they haven't thought about it and haven't looked into the issue."

During the 10 years ending in 2003, KidsAndCars.org collected accounts of more than 30 cases of parents' leaving children in locked cars outside casinos.

That was shown to be a lowball count when the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal studied Indiana Gaming Commission records to reveal 37 incidents in which 72 children were left unattended at casinos in that state in 1999 and 2000.

News stories contain dozens of accounts of gamblers across the nation who left children in vehicles.

A few cases have proved fatal.

In 1997, a 10-day-old girl died in a car while her mother gambled for hours in a South Carolina casino.

The next year, a 3-year-old Louisiana boy died in hot van while his nanny played video poker for five hours.

In 2004, a 9-month-old Florida girl died in her car seat outside a track where her father was betting on horses.