A 911 call on a Wednesday night in Osceola County, Florida, ended up putting a mother in handcuffs two days later.
It started around 8:30 p.m. on October 21. One of four children at a home on Parkway Boulevard called for help after a dumbbell fell on her 9-year-old brother’s head. Deputies from the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office showed up shortly after and found something they didn’t expect. There wasn’t a single adult in the house.
Fire rescue took the boy to Celebration Hospital. He was treated there and later sent home. The other kids in the house were 14, 12 and 11.
Deputies called the children’s mother, 50-year-old Irene Miller of Kissimmee. She told one of them by phone that she was working in Las Vegas and planned to be back October 23. Investigators then learned she had left Florida on October 18.
Miller said she had set up a babysitter, who was traveling from Tampa, to help the kids get ready for school each morning and check on them after school. But according to authorities, she had not required the sitter to stay overnight.
The children’s father agreed to take all four of them to his place. Detectives, meanwhile, arranged to meet Miller when she got home. On Friday morning, October 23, they met her as she walked off her flight and arrested her.
She was charged with four counts of child neglect without great bodily harm and booked into the Orange County Jail. Sheriff Chris Blackmon spoke on the case in a statement. “The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office will not tolerate child neglect. These cases will be investigated, and charges will be brought against the parents who are not properly supervising or caring for their children,” he said.
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