HIALEAH, Fla. – A woman is facing two child neglect charges after police said she “abandoned” her 12-year-old son by letting him walk away from a Hialeah bus stop; he planned on going all the way to Missouri on foot.
According to an arrest report, he and his 2-year-old little brother were filthy from not having showered in more than a week.
Recommended Videos
Authorities took Morgan Taylor Jones, 32, into custody early Thursday morning. Her address is listed in the arrest report as an apartment in Miami’s Upper Eastside neighborhood.
The report states that Jones and her children had just arrived in South Florida Wednesday morning and had been running errands all day using public buses.
Police said the 12-year-old got in an argument with Jones at a bus stop in front of the Wendy’s at 1730 W. 49th St., near the Westland Mall, and told her he wanted to be with his grandmother in Columbia, Missouri, where he grew up.
The report states the boy searched for his grandmother’s address on his cellphone, “saw that it would take 20 days to walk there and decided to walk.”
Police said Jones yelled out the boy’s name as he walked away, but never followed him.
The boy called his grandmother at around 9 p.m. to tell her what he was doing, the report states.
Police said she told him to turn around and go back to the bus stop, where his mother was. But, according to the report, she wasn’t there. The boy said he couldn’t call his mother because her phone had no battery and his phone was about to die.
The boy charged his phone at Wendy’s and gave his location to his grandmother, who called Hialeah police, the report states.
An officer wrote that the boy “did not know where he was,” did not know where his mother was and “or where their new home was,” saying he had no family in the Miami area.
“The victim said (he) and his little brother had not taken a shower in over a week and he did not know where he was going to sleep tonight because the place where he was told he would be temporarily living at was a one-bedroom efficiency with only one bed where the owner sleeps,” the officer wrote in the report.
The officer said “both victims had dirty clothes on, their skins were covered in dirt and were emitting a foul body odor from lack of hygiene.”
Police arrested Jones just after midnight and victim advocates assisted in providing care for the children.
As of Friday, she was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $2,000 bond.