A mother in China is getting a social-media lashing after her young son became trapped in her BMW and she reportedly wouldn't let rescuers smash the car's windows to save him, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per local media, firefighters responding to a call of a child locked in a car Saturday in the city of Yiwu found the boy—IDed as 17 months old, though the Straits Times says he's 3—"sitting in the driver's seat of the car, crying and prying at the glass," the Journal notes. Locksmiths were already trying to open the door to save the boy, who had reportedly been trapped by that point for about an hour. But as the boy's condition appeared to worsen, firefighters mentioned breaking the windows, and a witness tells the Straits Times the boy's mom balked at that idea, pleading with firefighters to let the locksmiths keep trying instead. The firefighters, however, opted to smash the window and retrieve the child.
Comments on China's Weibo site were not kind. "Looks like the car window is her real son," one user posted, per the Straits Times, while the Journal cites another commenter saying, "The answer is simple: First smash up the parents, then smash the glass." The outrage may also be tied to deep-seated biases against drivers of luxury cars in China: According to a survey last year, "Chinese drivers of BMW cars are seen as newly rich, materialistic showoffs by drivers of other luxury brands," the Journal notes. The mom has since told local media that she tried to break the window herself and that she simply didn't want the breaking glass to scare or hurt her child. And not everyone's blaming her. "Some journalists know that 'Dog Bites Man' isn't really news, so they try to rewrite it as 'Man Bites Dog,'" one Weibo user wrote this morning. (A mom reportedly left her kids in a hot car while in court for the same crime.)
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