Driver with son on roof pleads guilty
Prosecution to recommend probation, parenting classes
PORT WASHINGTON - A young mother who briefly drove her minivan with her 9-year-old son on the roof to hold down a plastic wading pool apparently got no offer of a better deal in court and pleaded guilty Thursday to a felony, with a promise that the prosecutor will recommend probation.
“My client’s choices are only for her children,” attorney Rachel Boaz said. “She didn’t want to take any risk at all of missing time with them“by going to trial.
Amber Schmunk, 29, of Grafton, was charged last year with second-degree recklessly endangering safety for the September incident, and that’s the charge she pleaded guilty to Thursday before Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Sandy Williams, who set sentencing for April 26.
District Attorney Adam Gerol said he would recommend three years of probation, with parenting classes and other standard conditions, and a withheld sentencing, meaning only if Schmunk violated probation would she return for a full sentencing that could include up to five years in prison.
Typically, a judge would impose but stay a prison term that would take effect automatically upon a serious breach of the probation agreement. According to the complaint:
On Sept. 9, Schmunk was picking up a plastic wading pool in Saukville. She didn’t think it would fit in her van, so she put it on the roof, and then had her son ride up there, too, to hold the pool in place during a short drive to her sister’s house on local streets.
Another driver reported the unusual sight to Saukville police and followed Schmunk for about a block before she stopped and took her son down from the roof. Two patrol cars stopped Schmunk a few minutes later after she had dropped the pool off at her sister’s house on S. Colonial Parkway.
Schmunk told police her dad let her do things like that when she was 9, and besides, she had her son strapped down on top of the pool and the roof ride only lasted 20 to 30 seconds before she moved her son back inside and wedged the pool in, too.
The police saw it differently, and Schmunk was charged. The oddity of it all got the story picked up around the country, from People magazine to the Huffington Post.
Schmunk, who has four children, faced other challenges last year. A former landlord won an eviction action before Judge Williams against Schmunk over a Port Washington apartment in November. The city had found numerous code violations at the premises in September and ordered them repaired. The landlord told city officials in October he could not make the repairs.