Dumpster Driving

Why walk the garbage to the dumpster when you can drive it? Better yet, why not use it as an opportunity to let your pre-pubescent child and his friend get some unsupervised experience behind the wheel? What could go wrong? For starters, a vehicle lodged into a building, a damaged gas main, multiple evacuations and criminal charges.

Diomara Barrientos-Galeana, a 36-year-old mother in Fairfield, Calif., permitted her 12-year-old son and his 15-year-old friend to use the family's Ford Explorer to ferry trash to a nearby dumpster. The 15-year-old driver subsequently lost control of the vehicle and plowed into the laundry room of an apartment building, severing a gas line. Police, working a separate accident nearby and summoned by the sound of the crash, quickly evacuated residents from three apartment complex buildings due to the leaking gas.

The teens fled the scene but were later detained by police. Barrientos-Galeana faces charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. This demonstrated only slightly poorer judgment than the time she allowed her son to mow the lawn using a chainsaw.

SOURCE: KTVU.com