Mom Charged For Letting Son, 3, Pump Gasoline

FEBRUARY 12--A Pennsylvania woman who allegedly allowed her three-year-old son to pump gas into the family car was charged today with endangering the welfare of a child, police report.

Theresa A. Moran Camara, 46, was named in a misdemeanor criminal complaint filed in District Court.

According to investigators, cops responded last month to a Giant gas station in Lancaster “for a report of a toddler using the gas pump.” Officers discovered, however, that the child was no expert pump jockey.

A witness, Gregory McCarter, reported that he had observed “a female instructing a very young child on how to pump gas into the vehicle.” McCarter, who said he saw the boy “pumping gas into the vehicle by himself,” added that, “the boy must have pulled the pump out before releasing the handle, because he ended up spraying gasoline onto himself.”

A police review of surveillance video “confirmed that the female driver had allowed her toddler child to pump gas by himself” into a Toyota Rav4, according to a probable cause affidavit. The video, an investigator added, “showed the toddler spraying himself with gasoline as he removed the pump.”

While Moran Camara and the boy left the gas station before police arrived around 9:15 PM, witnesses provided cops with the vehicle’s license plate number. When questioned by police about the January 19 incident, Moran Camara admitted that she had “allowed her son to help her in pumping gas and confirmed that he had sprayed gasoline onto both of them.”

Moran Camara and her child are pictured in the above Facebook photo. (1 page)