LOUISIANA – Authorities have released 911 calls one day after a Louisiana woman allegedly abandoned three children at different locations across West Palm Beach.
One call came in at around 5 a.m. from a Shell gas station near Okeechobee Boulevard and Drexel Road when an 8-year-old was seen wandering around the property.
Miesha Perkins, 36, stands accused of abandoning the three children on Monday. Besides the 8-year-old at the Shell gas station, a 3-year-old was left at a downtown West Palm Beach Publix, and a 1-year-old, authorities said, was left locked in a car while Perkins walked away.
All three children are OK thanks to people like Christopher Melton, who works at the Shell gas station and called 911.
“I just witnessed a mother get into an altercation with her daughter,” Melton said to a 911 dispatcher, “and now, the daughter is walking along the side of Okeechobee Boulevard heading towards downtown, and the mother, before that, she drove off in her car.”
Melton said over the phone he could not believe what he was seeing.
“She was sitting down,” he said. “She couldn’t even handle the fact that her mother just left her. Yeah, she was just sitting there in between gas pumps.”
Authorities said Perkins is not the mother to any of the children. They added she was helping the children’s father, who is a friend, and his three children move to West Palm Beach from Louisiana.
Investigators believe Perkins left the father somewhere along the Florida Turnpike before she allegedly abandoned the children. Perkins’ mother said her daughter suffers from bipolar disorder.
“This is something that she would’ve never done if she was on her medication,” she said.
Perkins faces three child neglect charges relating to the incident.
“No child deserves it. No person deserves it,” Melton said. “Everyone deserves to have someone that has their back, especially at that young age. For her to be just left there is absolutely absurd.”
