Providence, RI – There are some parents that shelter their children from fun activities that might be harmful to them. Then there are the parents who let their children explore the world and it’s many activities, hoping they will learn from them and will get a good understanding of who they are. Then, there are the two parents from Rhode Island who just let their two-year-old go skydiving.
Vince and Ashlie Bullock are two pretty normal parents who live in the capital of Rhode Island. Vince is an illustrator for one of the major newspapers and Ashlie is a music instructor. The couple have two kids: a five-year-old daughter named Gretchen and a two-year-old son named Max. Last week, the parents decided to have a day out with their children after spending a lot of time at work.
“We wanted to treat our kids to anything they wanted,” Vince recalled. “We had been working a lot, days and nights, and we were spending too much time away from our children. So, this past Saturday, Ashlie and I decided we would ask them what they wanted to do and we would let them do it.”
Vince said that Gretchen wanted to dress up like a princess and have a picnic in a park close by. The family started off their Saturday with just this. As for their son, he wanted to go skydiving. “We have no idea where he got that idea,” Ashlie told us. “We don’t know if he saw it on television or heard one of our friends talking about it, but that’s what he wanted to do.” Both Vince and Ashlie told us that they want their children to be able to do the things they want to do and they want to encourage their kids to chase their dreams. And that is why it didn’t take long for them to take Max to a nearby skydiving place.
“It was definitely the youngest person we’ve ever seen come through our doors,” Hank Bronson remembered. Bronson is the owner of Sky High, the skydiving place where the Bullocks took their toddler skydiving. “The law is, if you are younger than 18, all you need is a guardian’s signature to jump out of a place,” Bronson told us. “So, we had to let him jump. Not only that, both of the Bullocks told us their son wanted to dive alone, so we had to let him.”
Although Max can barely speak, he was able to jump out of a plane successfully and soar over the Providence skyline. “It’s like he was a pro up there,” Bronson told us with astonishment. “And he stuck the landing perfectly.”
As excited as Bronson and the Bullock family were, when the news got around the city, child services showed up at Vince and Ashlie’s door and took both of their children. The cops weren’t far behind, putting both parents in handcuffs and bringing them down to the police station on terms of child abuse and neglect.
The Bullocks will be entering court next month to not only see if they will get back custody of their children, but if they will get to move on in their lives, or spend the next few years behind bars.