A British woman has made the Spanish news for failing miserably to care for her toddler – she could be charged with child abandonment.
It was 20.30, one Wednesday at the end of last month when the Policía Local received a call concerning a 3-year old, in his pyjamas, wandering along a seafront road. Amazingly, it wasn’t until next morning, 14 hours later, that the mother bothered to contact the police.
It was a worker at a fast-food outlet that spotted the child and who alerted the police, saying that he could see from his premises a very small child in his pyjamas and barefoot, except for socks, wandering around.
The police took the child in but there was no way of knowing who he was – he had the normal ability of a 3-year old to communicate, and on top of that, he was obviously foreign – probably British, they deduced. Furthermore, nobody had phoned in to say that their child was missing.
When it became obvious that nobody was going to turn up at the police station, looking for the child, they gook him to the Hospital Universitario de Torrevieja around midnight for a check up and pass the night, if need be.
However, the same man who alerted the police in the first place, had phoned in again to say that a woman had appeared to be searching for something, or somebody in the same place at 21.30h. He approached her and asked her what she was doing and she replied that she had lost her child, so he told her that the police had him and that she should go to the municipal police station.
But the 34-year-old mother didn’t; not until 12 hours later, deciding to continue out on the town with friends, it appears, considering that her child was in safe hands.
She finally phoned the police at 08.30h the next morning, asking after her son. She was asked to come around immediately, but even so finally turned up at 10.30h, just as the police were about to go out and arrest her.
As a consequence of all this, a magistrate has ordered the affair investigated as a possible case of an abandonment of a minor.
(News: Torrevieja, Alicante, Valencia)