Today's Edition
(AGENCIES)
A contractor for the Alabama agency tasked with child welfare was arrested and charged Friday after she allegedly left a three-year-old boy in a hot car for five hours, resulting in his death, prosecutors said.
The charges come more than a week after the boy died, during which time his extended family’s attorney had been lobbying for accountability.
Kela Stanford was charged with violating an Alabama law that criminalises leaving a child under the age of seven unattended in a motor vehicle, according to a statement from the Jefferson County District Attorney. If convicted, Stanford would face a maximum of 20 years in prison.
"This is a terrible tragedy that was completely avoidable and unnecessary,” the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement, declining to comment further on the ongoing case.
Stanford was assigned by Alabama’s Department of Human Resources on a weekly basis to transfer the child, Ke’Torrius Starks Jr., known to family as "KJ,” from his day care to supervised visits with his father, family attorney G. Courtney French said at a news conference Friday. French did not say why KJ, who was buried Saturday, was in the state’s custody.
