Sanitation Workers Find Young Children Alone In Parked Car, Cops Say
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Two New York City sanitation workers are being hailed for their quick thinking after spotting four children left alone in a parked car on Monday afternoon.
As CBS2's Steve Langford reported, Wilson Arroyo and Carlos Rosado spotted the four young children alone in the back seat of a 2011 BMW which was parked next to a fire hydrant on Lafayette and White Streets on the Lower East Side.
The children -- with the oldest only four years of age -- were in the back seat, and the car was left running. Their babysitter was nowhere to be found.
Rosado and Arroyo immediately flagged down a Port Authority Police officer.
"Just to leave kids alone in a car was, I don't even know...can't even to put that into words," Arroyo said.
According to Port Authority police, the children were alone inside the car for about an hour. The babysitter, identified as Toni Myers, 26, of Manhattan, was arrested at the scene.
When the babysitter finally came back, she told them she left the children here because she had to go pay a fine, police said.
"She was trying to tell him she was just in there for 2 or 3 minutes to do the paperwork right there and she was back. But we all know it wasn't true," Rosado said.
The four children were returned to their families safe and unharmed, police said. The name of the family or families whose children were left in the car have not been released.
"I told my wife about that she was like she don't even want to hear about it gives her goosebumps, you know," Arroyo said.
The babysitter is due in court on Feb. 1.
