Somehow, you have just managed to walk out of a Walmart undetected while carrying a 58 inch television which you neglected to pay for. Well done. But you have a problem. 58 inch televisions are rather large. Too large to easily fit into your vehicle, it turns out. And wouldn’t you know it, as you struggle to cram it, your 5-year-old and yourselves into the car and make your getaway, here come a couple of nosy busybodies looking to make trouble. What to do?…What to do? You don’t have much time, so you do all you can do. Tie the door shut with a towel and get the hell out of there! It should be fine. It’s not like you’re going to take a sharp corner too fast and something’s going to pop it open, something like say an unsecured 5-year-old in a car seat. Naaah, that’ll never happen.
Passers-by at the Wal-Mart told police they saw the couple in the store before they walked outside to their blue Buick Rendezvous and tried to put a 58-inch Samsung TV, worth about $700, in the back seat, reports say. McLaughlin tied a cloth to the passenger-side rear door to try to secure it and the car drove off.
When the vehicle left the parking lot toward Worcester Court, a car seat with the boy inside it fell from the ajar door onto the pavement, according to reports. The car continued out of the parking lot but later returned. At that point, McLaughlin and a male witness to the incident got into an argument. The wife of the witness snapped several photos with her cellphone before McLaughlin took the boy and put him back in the vehicle before the couple drove off.
Well hey, at least they came back for him. Lemons…lemonade…all that.
The child was unharmed, which is a pleasant surprise given that he was described in an interview with witnesses as having “really flew out of the car and hit his head off the concrete really, really, really hard.”
Lisa Degerolamo and Daniel McLaughlin A.K.A. Mom and Dad at least had sense enough to admit guilt to all charges. Degerolamo will spend 2 months in jail and the rest of the year on probation while McLaughlin was given an entire year to sit and think about what he’s done, perhaps while watching a much smaller TV.
