A woman is facing a child abandonment charge after she was caught on camera leaving a two-year-old boy on the doorstep of a Texas home this past Wednesday night.
According to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, authorities received a 911 call Wednesday night about a two-year-old being abandoned at the caller’s residence.
“The caller advised that she heard her doorbell and a knock at the door,” Lt. Scott Spencer said Thursday. “When she opened the door, she found a two-year-old child alone on her doorstep.”
The woman is reported to have left the location without checking to see if anyone was home or whom the child would be released to, “which placed the child in great danger.”
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On arrival, police were shown surveillance camera footage from the residence and say the woman arrived in a white passenger car. The suspect can be seen in the video, released by police, holding the child in the air by one arm before ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door, before returning to the vehicle which drove off.
Deputies canvassed the area trying to find someone who knew the child but were unable to locate anyone, at which point authorities say child protective services were contacted and the child was taken into their custody.
Spencer said on Thursday morning members of the media approached a man at his residence in the same neighbourhood, next door to the home where the child was left, and asked him if he knew the child. The father then recognized the boy as his son and identified him as such.
Detectives arrived and conducted a preliminary investigation.
“Detectives learned that the father of the child received a text from the mother of the child advising that a friend was going to drop off the child in the early afternoon,” Spencer said. “When the child did not show up at the residence the father assumed that plans had changed with the mother and he then left the residence for the evening.
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“Right now we are ecstatic that the child has been found and detectives are working with child protective services to reunite the child with the father and family.”
Authorities said the child had been dropped off not only after the father had left, but at the wrong doorstep.
The mother was being interviewed by police on Thursday, authorities said, but said she was not who left the child at the doorstep. Spencer said the woman is facing a third-degree felony charge of child abandonment and has yet to be taken into custody. He said they don’t believe she is “on the run” but they are still trying to get in contact with her.
Asked why the mother did not drop the child off herself, the sheriff’s department said she was in hospital and had only been discharged Thursday morning.
According to Spencer, the boy is in good health and was in “good spirits” and is currently with a foster family.