Child left alone in car leads to felony neglect charge

A woman accused of leaving her 17-month-old child alone in her car for 30 minutes while she shopped at the Grafton Kohl’s store nearly two years ago was charged last week in Ozaukee County Circuit Court with neglecting a child.

Officers who were called to the store at 4:25 p.m. June 10, 2019, by an employee who noticed the windows of the car were cracked about three inches and the sunroof was open. It was sunny and 70 degrees outside, according to the criminal complaint.

One of the officers reached through an open window and unlocked the car to get to the child, who was sitting calmly in the backseat with a pacifier in her mouth.

EMTs evaluated the child and determined she was uninjured.

Police looked up the owner of the car and had the store page her. At 4:39 p.m., the child’s mother, a Cedarburg woman who is now 38, came out of the store and told officers she had only been shopping for eight to 10 minutes, the complaint states.

The woman, who Ozaukee Press is not naming to protect the identity of the child, said she intentionally left her daughter in the car because she was sleeping. The woman, police noted, did not seem “overly concerned” that officers were called to check on the child, according to the complaint.

This is not the first time the woman has been charged in connection with the June 10, 2019, incident. Four days after it occurred, she was charged with felony child neglect, but during an Aug. 21, 2019, preliminary hearing, Judge Jerome Fox found the prosecution failed to show probable cause to support the charge and dismissed the case.

Prosecutors charged the mother with misdemeanor child neglect on Jan. 2, 2020, but then asked a judge to dismiss the case and last week again charged her with felony child neglect, as well as two misdemeanors — obstructing an officer and disorderly conduct.

Prosecutors can refile charges after they have been dismissed during a preliminary hearing if they have evidence that was not introduced at the hearing.

According to the criminal complaint filed last week, store surveillance video showed the woman entering Kohl’s at 4:09 p.m. and shopping in areas of the store from which she could not see her vehicle. 

When she was paged, she was seen on the video running to the front desk after having been in the store for 30 minutes.

A store employee told an officer that when the woman came to the front desk, she did not seem concerned. When she was told Grafton police were called to the store because her child was alone in the car, she asked, “And?” the complaint states.

The complaint notes that the woman parked her car in an area that could only be seen from the western-most entrance of the store. It also notes that an officer had only to reach through an open window to unlock the car, and that if someone took the child, they could travel a considerable distance on nearby I-43 before it was discovered the child was missing.

Felony child neglect is punishable by a maximum 18 months in prison and 18 months of extended supervision.