A single mother in Miami Gardens has been arrested and is facing neglect charges after she left her 4-year-old child inside her air-conditioned car while she attended a job fair.
25-year-old Amber Collier was arrested on Monday, July 1, after she allegedly left her 4-year-old daughter in a locked car while she attended a job fair. The young mother is now facing a child neglect charge after police responded to a call “in reference to a child locked inside a vehicle” for more than an hour.
When officers arrived, they saw the child in the back seat of the car and said she was “visibly upset,” according to a probable cause statement Fox News obtained.
Police told the child to unlock the door and investigated the scene. After reviewing Sam’s Club surveillance footage they determined that Collier had entered the store at about 10:30 a.m. and returned more than one hour later, local outlets reported.
The car’s air-conditioner was on and the child was given a cellphone to use in case of an emergency, police say. Collier received a public defender who said the single mother is currently receiving financial aid to attend college part-time.
“Financially, right now, she’s going through a tough time and she wants to work,” he said.
A prosecutor against Collier’s case called out the fact that the child could have been kidnapped.
“My concern is not that the child would have overheated,” he said during the July 2 hearing. “My concern is, in that period, over an hour, anybody could have gone to that car and taken that child.”
The prosecutor asked Broward County Judge Jackie Powell to set Collier’s bond at $5,000. Powell instead set the bond at $2,500 and ordered Collier not to have any contact with her child pending the outcome of a family court hearing, Atlanta Black Star reports.
