A Florida mother was arrested after leaving her three-year-old son unattended in an apartment while she underwent plastic surgery. Body camera footage captured the arrest of a Florida mother, still bandaged from recent cosmetic surgery, after she left her young son alone in an apartment for an extended period.
The police found the three-year-old boy wandering alone in an apartment complex on the 8400 block of Northwest 104th Avenue in Doral on June 27. His mother, Jessica Renteria, 25, was subsequently charged with child neglect.
A Mother's Neglect
Surveillance footage shows Renteria leaving her Airbnb rental apartment around 10 a.m. Several hours later, her son was seen leaving the same apartment carrying a cell phone, according to WSVN. Concerned neighbours contacted the police after finding the boy wandering the apartment complex. Body camera footage shows officers actively searching for his family.
"Hey, little buddy, what's your name?" an officer said. "Do you know where you live? Do you know where Papi and Mami are?" Cops then asked neighbours if they knew the child's parents or if they had seen him before.
"You said you saw him right here?" an officer asked a person. My neighbour saw him there. He was sleeping," the neighbour responded. "Hello, by any chance, are you missing a kid?" an officer asked another resident.
In the surveillance footage, someone is heard comparing the situation to the case of an Ohio mother, Kristel Candelario, who left her 16-month-old daughter alone in a playpen for ten days last summer while on vacation. "This is like the girl, the lady, that left her daughter to go on vacation," an officer said.
Child Neglect Leads To Arrest
Renteria was eventually located several miles away at a surgery centre. Surveillance footage shows her being arrested in the back of a police car, wearing a robe with bandages wrapped around her head.
According to arrest documents obtained by NBC Miami, Renteria claimed that a friend was supposed to be watching her son. However, the friend denies this claim. "He [the friend] knows the defendant, but at no point in time was he told to take care of a juvenile," the court documents said.
At her June bond hearing, Renteria dressed in an orange jumpsuit and with her hair in long braids, became visibly emotional when the judge reprimanded her. "I mean, honestly, if she had time to go take care of her own personal issues at a cosmetic surgery centre without regard to the child, I'm concerned," the judge said.
Renteria was released from jail on June 28 after posting a $1,000 bond. Her pretrial hearing is scheduled for September 24, with a trial date set for December 2. Unfortunately, crimes against children are a pervasive issue worldwide.
A Statista report reveals that in the United States, parents are more likely to perpetrate child abuse than non-parents. In 2022, approximately 191,450 children were abused by their mothers, while their fathers abused 125,489.
