In the last moments of Camden Pierce Hughes short life, a stranger a Hampton, N.H., hotel manager working the evening shift first turned the child and his mother away only to take pity on the pallid boy and pay for half the bill for one nights stay.
His motivation for the kind act was pity, but
solely for the child. The mother has already told him that she is all alone, virtually penniless, far from home and transporting a gravely ill child in a truck --- but he didn't feel any pity for her, just the child? :waitasec:
What if I let her go out on the road? Maybe she could have gotten stopped for speeding. Maybe she could have talked to somebody. Maybe she could have gone down a different path.
Odd comment. How would offering JM a room that night
stop her from "talking to somebody"? Or "going down a different path"? Getting stopped for speeding would make no difference, except that the local police would have asked a few questions about the condition of the child.
"He just looked tired. I knew something was wrong with him. I could just tell. He just wasnt like a kid, sparky and looking around, like a what-am-I-doing-here kind of thing, said Lyons, adding when the mother, Julianne McCrery, 42, first came into the office, she was carrying her son and bearing a sad look on her face.
The best way for a hotel manager to handle this situation would be to insist on a detailed explanation of the child's condition and to offer to provide assistance in obtaining medical help. If the woman were uncooperative, the manager would then have reasonable grounds for suspicion of neglect or abuse to report to the local police.
However, there is no harm in reporting such suspicions, even
without being sure. Best to err on the side of caution. For all he knew, he might have been the third or fourth person to report that she seemed to be acting strangely, and the police might already have been searching for her and the child.
The manager's account suggests that Camden was already dying
before he entered the hotel.
I said, Do you need money for food? She said, No I got it.
Better to ask the child directly if he were hungry, and then observe how both the child and the parent each react.
Also, why ask her if she needed
money for food? Not like she could run out to a supermarket or McD's with her child so ill.
Better to offer food itself rather than money for food. That way the money can't be used for drugs. Again a refusal would have seemed suspicious, since JM had already claimed that she had no money to pay for the room.
Generally, an hotel manager needs to be able to deal with all types of medical emergencies, and be somewhat street-smart about the ways of drug addicts and criminals to protect their guests from danger.
... That night I was going to give her $50 for a hotel room for another night. I figured she was going back to Texas or somewhere.
Hotels can sometimes waive fees for charity & use the waiver as tax deduction. Did he discuss this situation with his supervisor or other managers or employees? Why didn't he ask exactly where she was going and why?
I might have been the last person to see the little boy alive, he said.
Hmmm ...
If she just came to the door and said, Im having a bad time or Im sad, I would have done everything in my power to save that kid.
The child, but not the mother? At that point in time, not knowing that she might be a murderer, would she too not have seemed worthy of saving?
He states that all of his concern was focused on the child, but he recounts apparently two long interactions with JM (once in his office with the child in her arms, and also again in the parking lot), not mentioning any statement that the child made either to JM or to himself.
Seems to me as if this particular manager was going way overboard to avoid confrontation with this woman, and also he seems as if he may have been protecting her too much from scrutiny (that is, by not bringing her desperate situation to anyone else's attention, etc).
