Florida Couple Leaves Kids in Car While Attending Luke Bryan Concert
There’s been much concern about the behavior of country music fans at mainstream country concerts lately, especially in parking lot rituals leading up to the concerts themselves, but this is is a parking lot incident that goes way beyond piles of trash and disorderly patrons.
Courtney Blankley and Kiel Sheppard are facing child neglect charges after leaving their two children, ages 9 and 11, in their car as they attended a Luke Bryan concert at Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, FL on Saturday, September 19th. The couple reportedly drove over 100 miles from New Port Richie, FL to attend the concert, and did not arrange child care for the two children.
As other fans passed by the car on their way to the concert, they noticed the kids in the car and called police. Authorities were able to locate the parents by using one of the children’s cellphones, and calling the father. The children had been left alone for roughly 45 minutes while their parents attended the concert, according to authorities.
READ: From Checklist to Bro-Country: The Subversion of Country Music
The parents had left the car running for the children, but this does not change the severity of the incident. Experts say leaving a car running for an extended period with children inside can also pose a major safety risk. Courtney Blankley and Kiel Sheppard later admitted leaving the children unattended was “probably not the best idea.”
September 23, 2015 @ 11:08 am
This is obviously Luke Bryan’s fault.
September 23, 2015 @ 11:19 am
Nobody is saying it is.
September 23, 2015 @ 11:19 am
I am.
September 23, 2015 @ 11:22 am
I stand corrected 🙂
September 23, 2015 @ 11:38 am
Well, and there are Luke Bryan’s recent comments:
“They want to go to my show and not analyze anything, and not overthink.”
https://savingcountrymusic.com/keep-it-simple-stupid-the-dumbing-down-of-country-music
September 25, 2015 @ 8:40 am
You sir, have the best screen name I’ve ever seen. I miss seeing the ‘ol #00 zip around the track on Sundays! Cheers!
September 23, 2015 @ 11:16 am
“Courtney Blankley and Kiel Sheppard are facing child neglect charges after leaving their two children, ages 9 and 11, in their car as they attended a Luke Bryan concert at Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, FL on Saturday, September 19th. The couple reportedly drove over 100 miles from New Port Richie, FL to attend the concert, and did not arrange child care for the two children.”
Camacho 2016 baby.
This is what is going to put sites like the Onion out of business.
September 24, 2015 @ 9:35 am
This is totally unrelated, but when you mention Camacho, I definitely though of this article: http://flavorwire.com/537887/who-said-it-presidential-hopeful-donald-trump-or-idiocracy-president-camacho
September 23, 2015 @ 11:26 am
Funny, I’d have pegged them more as Brantley Gilbert fans.
September 25, 2015 @ 8:59 am
“Funny, I”™d have pegged them more as Brantley Gilbert fans.”
LOLOLOLOL………………
September 23, 2015 @ 11:30 am
“Courtney Blankley and Kiel Sheppard later admitted leaving the children unattended was “probably not the best idea.””
Oh really you don’t FUCKING SAY!?! Either leave the children with some relatives or DON’T GO AT ALL!!!
September 24, 2015 @ 5:58 pm
I saw a young woman with an infant in her arms at a concert – sitting close to the front. I was amazed that she was allowed entrance to the venue.
September 24, 2015 @ 7:22 pm
Try this for horrifying (and I’ll only mention this once because I regret doing it) I went to see Hank Jr. in a concert at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum and in the middle of the concert I saw a guy throw a toddler to Hank Jr. and he caught the infant and comforted him because he was crying.
Again I will only mention that concert ONCE so I appreciate it if y’all didn’t press me on it again.
September 23, 2015 @ 11:34 am
First thing that comes to my mind when you leave the car running with the kids in it is you’re just one broken window away from a carjacking and a kidnapping.
September 23, 2015 @ 11:40 am
Or a shift into drive away from an accident, or an emissions leak away from a double homicide.
September 23, 2015 @ 4:57 pm
Or an 11 year old’s first joy-ride/driving lesson…
September 23, 2015 @ 11:45 am
They just wanted to “Strip it Down” without the kids around.
September 23, 2015 @ 12:00 pm
This makes me sick! =(
They better be lucky they didn’t suffocate from heat exhaustion (just one of numerous dangerous hypotheticals in this context). Else, they’d “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” from them for good (or at least I hope so).
September 23, 2015 @ 3:47 pm
I agree with you Nadia.
September 23, 2015 @ 12:19 pm
The only thing worse these “parents” could have done to these poor children would have been to actually purchase them tickets to the concert. Making their poor children sit through a Luke Bryan concert would have been child abuse.
September 23, 2015 @ 12:31 pm
I find that funny.
September 23, 2015 @ 12:52 pm
Would have made more sense if the ‘parents’ stayed in the car and the 9 and 11 year old went to the concert. That being Bryan’s target demographic and all……………..
September 23, 2015 @ 1:03 pm
Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to be stupid.
September 23, 2015 @ 4:58 pm
Ignorance can be cured…
Stupidity goes all the way to the bone…
September 25, 2015 @ 2:35 am
I am guessing they left the car running so that they could leave their Luke CDs playing for the kids. They wouldn’t want them to miss out on all the good music!
September 23, 2015 @ 12:25 pm
Leave MY 11-year-old ass alone in a running car one time and see what would have happened!
Yeeeeee-haw!!!!!!!!!
September 23, 2015 @ 12:31 pm
Seeing how this behavior is mostly seen in fans of cRap music it guarantees LB is definitely not country.
September 23, 2015 @ 12:48 pm
Mother of the year there looks like she is part of the reason we can no longer buy Sudafed over the counter.
September 23, 2015 @ 1:51 pm
Meth: not even once. FL has bad prescription drug abuse problems even before getting into the manufactured stuff.
September 23, 2015 @ 12:58 pm
I for one support these two! I wouldn’t want my kids to see Luke Bryan hahahaha.
But seriously, this right here is proof that the bro-crowd are idiots. I did a paper about it for a college class using Trigger’s articles last summer, with the rapes, arrests, trash and whatnot. Oh how I wish I could do it this year… This article would be there, the one with the police transcripts “She’ll call us if she smells it again” and the car going round and round the traffic circle…
Honestly I’ve reached the point where I’m the one taking my parents to see acts they’ve never heard of before… Wish there were an Isbell show near here, my dad is completely hooked… Ma on the other hand… She likes Blake Shelton…
September 23, 2015 @ 1:28 pm
Man this guy looks inbred! Dumbasses.
http://cdn.bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/deliverancebanjokidbanner.jpg.
September 23, 2015 @ 2:02 pm
Shitty music attracts shitty people.
September 23, 2015 @ 2:32 pm
“…later said leaving the children in the car was ‘probably not the best idea'”
Well, no shit, any rational person would’ve figured that out before the concert. Then again, rational people don’t typically go to Luke Bryan concerts…
September 23, 2015 @ 2:39 pm
I can recall many times when I was left in a car as a child while my mother went in the grocery store or department store for 45 minutes. I believe she left the keys in the car to listen to music and this was before the age of cell phones. I’m not a fan of these stories because they have nothing to do with country music. Just looking at the comments on this page should be proof enough that this is all about just bashing pop country artists. I think there are many far more legitimate ways to do that then this. Like this story: https://savingcountrymusic.com/sellouts-in-suits-the-rise-of-countrys-metro-bro That’s how you properly bash pop country.
September 23, 2015 @ 5:41 pm
My mom left me in a car in a parking lot as a kid. While she paid for gas, or picked up something at the grocery store. Not for 45 minutes with the damn car running (and 45 minutes is when the cops came, the parents obviously intended to leave them longer.) and CERTAINLY NOT at a concert venue full of drunk assholes at night.
September 23, 2015 @ 5:45 pm
Plus, what the hell is wrong with just picking on crappy pop country artists for the fun of it sometimes? 😛
September 24, 2015 @ 10:41 am
I guess you didn’t read my post after the second sentence. This story has nothing to do with Luke Bryan or country music or the state of country music or anything remotely close to that. This is a story about 2 people who got arrested for child neglect. Putting this story on a website called Saving Country Music is just cheap in my opinion. It was only put on here because people would get all giddy about bashing Luke Bryan and somehow associating him with this situation. If it happened to be a Sturgill Simpson concert would everybody on here talk about how this is somehow proof that Sturgill sucks? I happen to like this website for the most part because I feel it gives a someone objective insight into country music unlike the promo machines that are Ram Country on Yahoo and many others but this kind of stuff turns me off. It’s classless and makes the website look like the national enquirer.
September 24, 2015 @ 11:12 am
This wouldn’t happen at a Sturgill concert because Sturgill is a classy act who appeals to classy people… The problem is not that people want to insult Luke Bryan, the problem is that Luke Bryan is a poor role model who brings out the worst in people and needs to be removed from our collective cultural zeitgeist because he is impeding our progress both musically and culturally… The behaviors that Luke Bryan directly or indirectly promotes (drunk driving, objectifying women, acting shallow, partying at the expense of responsibility) are all things that hinder us as a society, and they need to go the way of Betamax, the Dodo, the Microsoft Zune, slavery, and blue leopard print clothing.
September 25, 2015 @ 10:22 am
Uhh, I don’t even know where to begin with that statement. Do you really believe that stuff you wrote? Give me a break, Luke Bryan’s very public tragedies in his life and how he’s dealt with them is about as commendable as anything. If you want to cherry pick lyrics to prove a point here you go.
“Marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT they all changed the way I see.”
“So every day I’m smoking my brain hazy”
“I don’t have to do a Goddamn thing except sit around and wait to die”
I don’t have a problem with Stugill Simpson and I am not so dense as to actually think that an artist and / or his lyrics are to blame for two people being arrested for child neglect.
September 26, 2015 @ 6:42 am
Public tragedies?
Let me make something clear: Luke Bryan is a forty year old dude who wears skinny jeans and sings about spring break… He acts like he’s had no more life experiences than a shut in highschooler… Those “public tragedies” should have imparted some worldly experience unto him that would have given him some life to sing about… That’s why Luke Bryan is an immature shallow person making music for immature shallow people. And on the subject of being a role model, I would say Luke Bryan acts like a child in interviews, and not a well behaved one, a self-entitled child.
Sturgill, on the other hand, recently passed up a chance to perform at an awards show where he was winning an award, to make up a performance he’d cancelled months ago. That’s a sign of class right there. He may write some bizarre, adult-oriented material, but that’s because he is a bizarre adult writing music for adults, and not an immature creep making spring break music for kids.
You don’t think an artist/lyrics can motivate people to do stuff? You don’t think that if people are exposed to a behavior every day by the radio that it will become normalized in their minds? You really give an audience credit they don’t deserve.
September 23, 2015 @ 3:18 pm
It’s always Florida. Sometimes Texas, but usually it’s Florida.
September 23, 2015 @ 5:00 pm
Yet “they” still ridicule Alabama and Mississippi…
September 23, 2015 @ 3:33 pm
Don’t blame country music. I blame the parents they should lose custody of the kids. Luke Bryan is not the blame for this.
September 23, 2015 @ 6:05 pm
No one is blaming country music here because Luke Bryan is not country music.
September 23, 2015 @ 7:57 pm
no the parents are to blame for this. but yeah Luke Bryan is not country music; indeed.
September 24, 2015 @ 11:32 am
My guess is the kids think Luke’s music sucks, and didn’t want to go in.
September 23, 2015 @ 3:43 pm
When the kids realized it was a Luke Bryant concert……they asked to be left in the car.
September 23, 2015 @ 4:57 pm
They could have been miserable, or left in the car.
September 23, 2015 @ 8:04 pm
Not to be an ass hat but kids love this douche and it is freakin creepy that their parents allow this. I bet their kids were fighting and screaming when their Wal Mart Gold Club ‘parents’ locked the car doors. Because the kids probably wanted to attend in a major way. That is the dooshat’s target audience and the youngsters love this guy, despite the fact that he is their father’s age. Or in certain regional areas including states outside of the south, their Granfather’s age.
September 23, 2015 @ 4:55 pm
Hopefully they get taken away from these 2 monsters and are adopted by a loving family with good taste in music.
September 23, 2015 @ 8:09 pm
Kiel. Really? What the hell kind of name is that? Guy was destined to be an asshole.
September 24, 2015 @ 6:55 am
while making fun of someone’s name is juvenile, studies HAVE proven that people with unusual names are more likely to have problems in school, the workplace, and in some places there’s even a correlation with having an unusual name and being a criminal… If we’re talking social issues why aren’t we fixing this?
September 24, 2015 @ 8:38 am
What’s juvenile is giving kids stupid fucking names. Honestly, naming a child is a responsibility, not a liberty. You’ve got people naming their kids after Game of Thrones characters, for Christ’s sake. They’ll regret that.
Also, what’s with the spelling common names like fourth graders? It’s getting really old.
September 24, 2015 @ 10:20 am
Hmm you have a point… I won’t lie, there are some popular names (like Chase) that I can’t imagine giving to a child… Yeah stupid names abound… (my former Aunt named her daughter Mashel because she didn’t know how to spell Michelle) I won’t lie, my name gets mispronounced a lot because, though it’s one of the most common first names, it uses the less common spelling… I think the problem is in part reading skills, I can’t imagine you’d disagree with me that way too many kids don’t learn to read as well as they should, and then spelling and pronunciation errors abound…
September 25, 2015 @ 2:40 am
People mispronounce Fuzzy?
September 25, 2015 @ 7:01 am
Haha no my “real world” first name. Is Fuzzy really one of the most common first names? if so where are all these people named Fuzzy? hahaha.
September 25, 2015 @ 9:23 am
So your first name is ” Real World ” Fuzzy ? Well sure …..I can see how people would misspell that – Reel …Riel ….Reil …Dominic ….
September 25, 2015 @ 6:12 pm
No, my first name is not Fuzzy… Fuzzy was a nickname that my friends called me, TwoShirts was added later after I accidentally showed up one day with two shirts and no pants. the now infamous “he’s Fuzzy TwoShirts” was uttered and it just stuck.
September 23, 2015 @ 9:46 pm
Could have been worse …. they could have taken the kids INTO the concert. That would have scarred them for life!
September 24, 2015 @ 12:53 am
It’s time for the kids to start listening Willie, Merle & Jones. Definitely not fans of Luke.
September 24, 2015 @ 4:56 am
This stuff and these types follow every kind of music. Bet we’re paying to raise their kids.
September 24, 2015 @ 6:21 am
“I got my kids locked-up- in- my -big-black- jacked- up- truck”
September 24, 2015 @ 10:19 am
The guy has quite the punchable face
September 24, 2015 @ 8:34 pm
The fact that this happened at “Perfect Vodka Amphitheater” is just rich.
September 25, 2015 @ 8:39 am
Because I’m sure there’s never any idiots at a Sturgill or Turnpike Troubadours show. I dislike Luke Bryan as much as the next guy but this is starting to take the tone of hipster smear bullshit.
September 25, 2015 @ 9:01 am
I think these parents deserve more credit for making sure these kids were out of ear-shot and NOT exposing them to Luke Bryan.
September 25, 2015 @ 9:05 am
So that’s NOT a picture of the kids above ? ….
September 25, 2015 @ 3:32 pm
Some people (actually a lot) should not be allowed to have children. Makes you wonder what other kinds of neglect goes on in their dysfunctional home.
September 28, 2015 @ 1:13 pm
Buttholes!