Reported by: Tom McKee
West Clermont Schools administrator give emotional statements to Union Township Police after her daughter dies in a hot car
Brenda Slaby was riding an emotional roller coaster when she was questioned by Union Township police an hour after her daughter, Cecilia, died in a hot car August 23.
The Glen Este Middle School assistant principal had left the two-year old inside the sun-drenched vehicle for eight hours, apparently forgetting the toddler was still in her car seat.
“Good mothers don’t do this,” she said. “I don’t know how I could live without my kids. They are my life.”
That was one of the statements made during the emotional 50-minute interview with Union Township police Detective John Pavia.
Copies were released to the media Thursday.
As the session progressed, Slaby sat slumped against a wall and occasionally rested her head on her hands folded in front of her.
She often sobbed as she spoke.
“I hope I can go on, having done this to one of your kids,” Slaby told Detective Pavia. “How can you forgive yourself?”
Detective Pavia replied, “I don’t think anyone is saying that this was done on purpose.”
“You just try to be everything to everybody and I failed my daughter,” Slaby continued.
“I don’t think anybody’s saying that this was done on purpose,” answered Detective Pavia. “I don’t think that’s crossing anybody’s mind.”
Much of the questioning dealt with the morning of August 23 and how the two-year old was left in her mother’s SUV.
Slaby said she left home around 6:30 a.m. with Cecilia asleep in a child-restraint seat right behind the driver’s seat.
Her normal routine was to take her daughter to babysitter Anne Hoffman’s house, then go to school.
However, on that Thursday morning, she changed the routine, and wondered whether Cecilia would still be alive if she hadn’t done that.
As she drove on State Route 32, Slaby said she was going to make the turn to Hoffman’s house, but thought it was too early.
So, she changed lanes and headed to Busken Bakery at Old State Route 74 and Glen Este-Withamsville Road.
There, she picked up donuts for staff meetings she was to run in her job as Glen Este Middle School assistant principal.
Once she picked up the donuts, Slaby headed straight to school, with Cecilia still in her car seat.
“Did you forget she was back there?” asked Detective Pavia?
“No,” Slaby snapped. “My plan was to go to the sitter’s house after Busken. Evidently, I didn’t. I just got out of my routine.”
“That’s what messed me up,” added Slaby. “Stupid donuts!"
Slaby said Cecilia always slept soundly on the trip to the babysitter.
“She never wakes up,” Slaby continued. “I just put her in her car seat and she never wakes up.”
She added that she normally took Cecilia with her – and her husband, Gary, took their older daughter, Allison, to school.
It was around 3:15 p.m. on August 23 that Amy Aluise spotted Cecilia in her mother’s car in the parking lot, according to the written statement she gave police.
Aluise got in her own car, thinking that Brenda Slaby must have picked up her daughter from the babysitter.
However she sensed that something was wrong and re-checked the Slaby car.
“Brenda’s baby is in the car!,” she shrieked, before running into the school to find Slaby.
Upon hearing the news, she said Slaby had a look of, “shock and panic” – “threw down whatever she had in her hand” – and ran outside.
“Brenda came around the corner screaming her daughter’s name,” Eileen Gorman wrote in her statement to police.
Gorman placed one of the 911 calls asking for police and fire assistance.
Slaby released the child restraint and, “cradled Cecilia in her arms,” Aluise said.
Cecilia was taken into the school cafeteria where CPR was unsuccessful.
The cause of death was listed as hyperthermia.
The first police officers on the scene reported seeing Slaby on the floor “sobbing hysterically.”
At the end of her interview with Union Township police, the weight of the events of the day fell full-force on Slaby’s shoulders.
“Oh, my God. I just want to die. I can’t go on. I can’t do this,” Slaby whispered through her sobs.
“I just want to go away. I can’t face anybody ever again,” she added.
Numerous times during the interview Detective Pavia asked whether Slaby wanted to talk to counselors to share her feelings.
Slaby finally agreed to talk with personnel at Clermont Mercy Hospital.
Clermont County Prosecutor Don White continued this Thursday to defend his decision not to file criminal charges against Slaby.
White says Cecilia’s death was an accident, not a crime.
Union Township police had recommended a charge of child endangering, but White said the case lacked an element of recklessness that would be needed to obtain a conviction.
