Florida mother arrested after a security officer finds 3-year-old asleep on a sidewalk
Fort Walton Beach FL May 3 2022
A Florida woman’s night at the discotheque landed her in jail after deputies reported that security found her 3-year-old asleep on a sidewalk.
It happened Saturday, April 30, in Fort Walton Beach, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said in a May 1 news release. Fort Walton Beach is on the Florida Panhandle, about 160 miles southwest of Tallahassee.
“The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office was called to Gibson Street around 1 a.m. Saturday after a security officer found a three-year-old wrapped in a blanket asleep on a sidewalk,” the sheriff’s office said.
“Subsequent investigation led to the discovery of two more young children asleep alone in an apartment at the complex.”
Investigators did not release the ages of the other two children. The security guard was patrolling the Choctaw Village Apartments at the time of the discovery.
The apartment community consists of 48 two-story units along a largely residential street in north Fort Walton Beach.
A 25-year-old woman who identified herself as the mother of the children eventually returned to the apartment, where deputies questioned her, officials said.
She “admitted she had gone out to a nightclub about 90 minutes earlier, leaving the children unattended,” the sheriff’s office said. The mom was arrested and charged with three counts of child neglect without great bodily harm, the sheriff’s office said.
