A 20-year-old Detroit metro area woman was arrested Thursday after a driving instructor found a 2-year-old and 1-year-old abandoned behind Lamphere High School on Saturday.
The children were discovered in car seats around 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, when instructor John Belyea and a student were headed inside the high school to use the restroom.
Madison Heights police have arrested a 20-year-old woman after an infant and a toddler were abandoned behind a high school.
Police did not explicitly say if the woman is the children's mother. https://t.co/AnG4BvXXKb
— Local 4 WDIV Detroit (@Local4News) July 20, 2023
“When I came over here (toward the entrance), I’m listening, and it’s a weird noise like two cats fighting,” Belyea told ClickonDetroit. “Something’s wrong. So I started making loud noises to scare them off, and I’m like, wait a minute, that’s not cats. I’m thinking, ‘That sounds like a baby.’ I didn’t see anything, so I walked over where I heard the noise from around the wall where the two infants were.”
Belyea said he was grateful that he was there to discover the two babies, for with school out for the summer, he doesn’t know how long they would have been out there.
“The one that was screaming, I want to say, kind of saved her brother, sister, or whoever because if I didn’t hear that noise, I wouldn’t go over around here and see them,” Belyea said. “I know whoever did this had to be in a bad situation, and I also feel bad for the young kids. I don’t know how long they were there for.”
Notes were found on the children, according to the Madison Heights Police Department.
Authorities were able to identify the parents, and on Thursday a 20-year-old woman was taken into custody. It is uncertain if she is the mother or guardian.
In Michigan, parents are able to legally surrender their newborn up until they are 3 days old according to Safe Delivery law.
Cases of parents abandoning their babies have become more prevalent in the news. Just last month, the body of a newborn was found in a garbage truck in Ohio, Breitbart reported.
And in May, a New Mexico mother was sentenced to 16 years in prision after leaving her newborn son behind a dumpster.
New Mexico law allows for parents to bring their baby up to 90 days old to any designated Safe Haven — typically a hospital, law enforcement agency, or fire station — without facing child endangerment charges.
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