Mother in prison, no one shows up on child’s birthday

Here’s today’s dose of bittersweetness:

It was an 8-year-old Wisconsin boy’s birthday this week and he was left standing at school waiting for someone in his family to give him a ride home.

Nobody showed up. His mother is in prison.

There wasn’t much a Green Bay cop could do to make things better other than what he says cops usually do.

Yesterday Officer Robinson responded to a local elementary school for a child that was not picked up at the end of the…

Posted by Green Bay Police Department on Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The child’s grandfather was eventually found.

“My mom had boyfriends who came and went and they would get into fights and it’s hard to see at a young age,” Darryl Robinson told BuzzFeed. “It affects kids when they are growing up and if there’s not someone there to tell them it doesn’t have to be this way and that’s not okay, they can get stuck in it.”

“We grew up on the opposite of the river but it’s the same neighborhood and it’s easy to get into trouble if you don’t have anyone to connect with in a positive way,” he said.

In Robinson’s youth, an officer also gave him a ride and bought him lunch.

“You don’t know how it’s going to turn out. If it wasn’t for that officer I don’t know if I would be doing this today.”