A Virginia woman and three sheriff's deputies helped make four children comfortable, providing them with formula and diapers after they were left alone in a car in a Walmart parking lot, WTVR reported.
Crystal Richards-Jackson said she noticed three Hanover County deputies making multiple trips to a car parked outside a Walmart in Mechanicsville. Four children -- two 3-year,-olds, a 2-year-old and a 1-month-old infant, had been left untended in the vehicle at 4:30 a.m. Thursday. The temperature was 73 degrees, and deputies said the children had been in the car for more than an hour.
“It was hot,” Richards-Jackson told WTVR. “I mean, I was sweating.”
Deputies said Kiear Ellis, 24, and another woman had left the children inside the car and went into the Walmart, where they were arrested on charges of shoplifting. Neither woman mentioned they had children in a car, WTVR reported.
Ellis is charged with felony grand larceny and three misdemeanor counts of child endangerment. The other woman, whose name has not been released, was charged with one count of petty larceny and one count of child endangerment.
Richards-Jackson called the deputies “angels.”
“They weren’t police,” she said. “They were parents. I saw the officers going back and forth and one officer came back with a bottle.”
Richards-Jackson said she persuaded deputies to allow her to try and find other family members for the children.
"I bought formula and Pampers and the deputy mentioned CPS (Child Protective Services),” she told WTVR. “I asked to see if I could find their family before getting CPS involved, and the deputy agreed."
Richards-Jackson says an aunt and grandmother came to get the children.
Aside from soiled Pampers and underwear, they were all in good shape.
"They (deputies) made sure these kids had food and didn't go hungry," she said.
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