OCTOBER 6–Meet Jackie Knott. The Alabama woman, 37, is facing a child endangerment rap for allegedly having her teenage daughter ride in a cardboard box atop her minivan as it traveled along an interstate highway Saturday morning. Knott, pictured in the below Albertville Police Department mug shot, told cops that her 13-year-old daughter Haley was serving as a human paperweight to keep the box from falling off the vehicle (and careening down U.S. 431). While Knott explained that the box was too large to fit inside her van, it is unclear why she did not seek to simply flatten it in an effort to squeeze the box into her crowded vehicle. When stopped by cops, Knott, a Boaz, Alabama resident, noted that “the box was tied to the van with a clothes hanger,” according to a police press release. That assurance did not sway cops, who arrested Knott in the shadow of a Tyson Foods poultry processing facility, according to an October 3 police report. (3 pages)
Now, the woman and her daughter are speaking out - only to WAAY 31. Haley Henderson says her mom is a great parent, and takes full blame for what happened. “My mom told me ‘No.’ It was a bad idea and I did it anyways.” Haley told WAAY 31’s Tiffaney Bradley. She says the boxes were for an event at a local church. “I was going to a 30 hour famine at Life Point Church in Albertville” Haley said. "We were not going to eat for thirty hours, and raise money for the hungry, and we were going to sleep outside in boxes. We already had two big boxes in the car and there was no room for the other one. "
Haley says she decided to put the third box on top of the family minivan but it wouldn’t stay in place. Haley thought it would be fun to climb inside and use her body to weigh it down. That’s an idea her mother now regrets. “We were going twenty miles per hour.” Jackie Knott told WAAY 31. “We were going slow as possible. We almost were about a mile and a half from the church making it there I know don’t it was just a bad decision.”
Despite the bad decision, Haley says the incident is being blown out of proportion, and her mom doesn’t deserve to be called a bad parent. “She’s an awesome mom. I mean, everyone likes her and you ask anyone in our neigborhood. She’s a good mom and she would never do anything wrong.”
