With all the controversy surrounding this so far I have to chime in before it sets in here too.
Shellie was outside with both her sons when this happened. She was not twitting from a computer. Her oldest son unwittingly left the pool gate open (yes the pool was fenced) and her youngest wandered inside and we all know the outcome.
What not many news reports are saying is that Shellie performed CPR on her baby until paramedics arrived. The time the paramedics were called has been reported from one minute after her last post (within that minute his lungs would have been full of water resulting in a severe lack of oxygen to his brain) to 11 minutes after her last tweet. I do know that her son rang 911 while Shellie performed CPR on her baby.
While paramedics were working on her son, (which meant all she could do was stand and watch the rest of the event unfold) she twittered and asked for prayers from her followers. When you are alone and in despair and can do absolutely nothing about what is going on around you, you do tend to want to reach out to someone, anyone.
Ask yourself...How many Websleuthers have asked for prayers for loved ones? How many, unasked, offer prayers for the loved ones whose children are missing, for the parents of those who have died? How many Websleuthers have attended the memorials of those they don't know in support...again participating in prayers.
What Shellie did is no different. It doesn't make her a bad mother. How many parents are sitting online at a computer right now posting twits, facebooking or playing online games who can't even see their kids or what they're doing?
The headlines I see everywhere say she was twittering as her son was dying.
As for not hearing her son fall in the pool...the majority of parents whose kids drown in pools hear nothing. Pool drownings are silent killers. And couple that with thinking that your pool gate is shut, and no one has left it open, you're left with a very sad scenario that no one on this earth would dream of happening to them.
Some children do not even fall into the pool, they slide in if they were reaching over it and not a sound is heard.
This is what I have learned just from finding all current reports on Shellie's boy drowning. I don't know Shellie at all. I do know she has a husband, an 18 year old and her 11 year old.
If the police can investigate her twitters and deem them to have no standing in the death of her son, why can't anyone else?