Lawsuit highlights safety

I would just like to say that I hope you are never in a situation

like my family and I have been in for the last 4 1/2 years.

The death of a child, especially one who was murdered, goes beyond

anything anyone could ever imagine. The grief, pain, heartache,

wondering and emptiness is often unbearable and very difficult to

describe. I still have to get up every morning and go on with my day,

getting my two other children ready for school. I go to my full-time,

8 a.m. to 5 p.m., five-day-a-week job, and go home to take care of

dinner, laundry and everything else before going to bed for another

restless, sleepless night. When I wake, I do it all over again. It is

not easy. But I do it.

For the Daily Pilot to judge us in the editorial “It’s time for

tragedy to end” because of a lawsuit that we filed is not fair. And

for the paper to not have its facts straight is appalling.

As for Flo Martin, the author of a Community Commentary on the

same subject; just because it is not “her style” to file a lawsuit

doesn’t mean that the lawsuit we have filed, knowing the true facts

of this case, is frivolous or without merit. If she would like to

know the facts of this case and the reasoning behind the pursuit of

this lawsuit, a simple phone call to us, our lawyer, the police

department or public files at the Santa Ana Superior Court might

change her mind. And if she thinks the school had advised the parents

of previous accidents breeching the fence, that the playground did

not have the proper conditional use permits or the motivation behind

this playground was not money motivated on their part, she’s wrong.

The church and preschool should be held accountable since there

had been a previous accident at the same site a few years before. Had

the playground been in the courtyard or a safer barrier been

installed, the children would not have been as visible or such easy

targets as they were that horrible day. This lawsuit is, as Cindy

Soto Beckett, Sierra’s mother, stated in the last article, “to draw

attention to the issue of safety in preschools and to set a

precedent, that someone will see this as a warning signal to make a

change that will make them more accountable.”

The only things in the editorial that were “good points” were the

mentioning of The Brandon Cody Wiener Scholarship Fund and Sierra’s

Light Foundation. Both Cindy and I have put our hearts and souls into

making a positive out of a negative. It is very hard work and very

time consuming but we are both very dedicated to our causes. And yes,

I am all for a Brandon and Sierra Law, and just to add another tidbit

of information, I am in collaboration with The Center for Grief and

Loss for Children, which has locations in Glendale, Pasadena and

South Los Angeles. And I will be opening The Brandon Cody Wiener

Costa Mesa Chapter of the Center for Grief and Loss for Children

later this year.

PAMELA WIENER

Costa Mesa

* Pamela Wiener is the mother of Brandon Wiener, one of the two

children killed at the Southcoast Early Learning Childhood Center.