Bucks Mom Charged With Leaving Toddler Alone Outdoors In Winter Weather
By Brad Segall and Natasha Brown
BENSALEM, Pa. (CBS) -- Bensalem police say a woman who appeared to be visibly intoxicated is facing child endangerment and related charges for allegedly leaving her one-year-old daughter in a shopping cart outside an apartment complex in near-freezing temperatures over the weekend.
Police say 30-year-old Loretta Hall of Bristol, Pa., left the child alone early Sunday morning, in the cold, on a grassy area between a shopping center and the Bucks Meadows Apartments on Knights Road. She told police she was trying to find her way back home to Bristol and was looking for some blankets.
Police sergeant Andrew Aninsman credits two residents of the apartment complex with getting involved when they heard a child crying.
"We feel that based on the actions of the people that found the child, that it is a potential that the child would have sustained hypothermia or something to that effect," Aninsman tells KYW Newsradio, "so they definitely cared for the welfare of the child."
He says the temperature was in the mid-30s at the time.
Police say Hall admitted to drinking alcohol and taking pills.
The child is now in the care of a social services agency. Hall is behind bars in lieu of $50,000 bail.
