I've always questioned the showing of graphic photos of the dead to children. Yeah, I know that they were a staple of driver's education -- but they were not local photos. If you show local photos, you risk something like this.

A 12-year-old girl saw her father's remains in a gruesome photograph shown during a presentation by police warning teenagers about the dangers of drunken driving.

The girl's mother, Marla Cabbage Higginbotham, said her daughter was traumatized by the experience at her middle school last month in which she saw her father lying in a pool of blood with a crushed skull and mutilated face and torso.

She said the family did not know he had been drinking when he died.

An attorney representing the mother and daughter sent a letter to the Knox County law director's office calling for an investigation.

"Why are we showing 12-year-olds mutilated dead bodies when they can't even drive a car for four more years?" attorney Gregory P. Isaacs said Friday. The police "are good people with good intentions who have made a terrible, terrible mistake."

Police officers say the names of the victims about to be shown and ask if any students knew them. They called out the name of William F. Cabbage before showing pictures of the wreck.

The girl did not recognize his name because she knew her father as Lynn Cabbage.

I'm sorry -- this is unacceptable. Shouldn't there have been family permission before using the photos in any presentation? Shouldn't there have been family permission before the kids were subjected to the photos?

Posted by: Greg at 02:31 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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