Frank Roder, a construction worker from the town of Winfield Park, had taken his son, Aidan, down to the Rahway River to feed ducks Thursday. But when he stopped briefly before settling on a parking space, the impatient boy jumped out and took off — straight toward a ledge 35 feet above the river, Roder recalled.
The panic-stricken father jumped out of the cab of his 2006 Jeep Commander and raced after the errant boy, catching him just feet from the edge.
That’s when Aidan, eyes as big as saucers, looked behind Roder and said, “Um, Daddy …”
Roder turned in time to see the Jeep nosedive down the embankment and land in the muddy water.
Roder hugged the boy and waited as Union County police converged on the scene over the next few hours. A crane pulled the Jeep out, and amazingly, it started right up, though Roder is pretty sure his insurance company will count it as totaled.
He was counting his blessings when a young cop approached him and handed him two tickets. One was for failure to produce the insurance card, which was somewhere in the waterlogged cab. The other was for failing to use his emergency brake.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Roder said. “The cop said, ‘If you would have taken the five seconds to apply the brake, this never would have happened!’
“I say, ‘Really? And if I did and my boy stepped over the edge and fell instead of the Jeep, then were would I be?’ He says, ‘Jail, for child endangerment.'”
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You simply cannot teach common sense. But you can fire for lack of it. JAJ48@aol.com
