A driver who plowed through a group of cyclists in Arizona, killing 2 and injuring 11, faces a one year prison sentence. His driver’s license will also be suspended for six months.

Ran into traffic?

A witness said Legend stepped into the street and was struck before his older brother could pull him back.

The driver struck a slow moving child who witnesses said had stepped off the curb and into the street. Stepped, not ran. The car then struck him before his brother could pull him back. There is no law against what these parents did. The driver on the other hand had an obligation to be aware of her surroundings including the children on the sidewalk beside the street who might step or fall into the street.

It also doesn't matter if the child was unsupervised. Did your parents keep you on a leash? Do you keep your kids on a leash? Even if the parent was there, the child could still have stepped off the curb and been killed. If the brother wasn't fast enough to pull him back, then then there is no basis to assume that the parent necessarily would have been.

Kids, unsupervised or not, do dumb things. The onus is on the driver to slow down when a potential hazard is spotted and to take steps to avoid it. Now, without more information about the setting I cannot say whether or not the driver should be charged. Maybe the kid wasn't visible to the approaching driver, for example. But if the parents are being charged when there is no crime or real negligence, then the driver should be too and the courts can sort it out.

A lot of people use the word "murder" in a colloquial sense and not a strictly legal one. Further some jurisdictions have degrees of murder where other jurisdictions would use manslaughter. I'm assuming the person you responded to meant the lesser charges.

the law doesn’t operate on what’s in your mind.

are you sure? intent is an element of many crimes.

edit: i tired nvm