Crime Blotter July 26-Aug. 8: Woman Leaves Child with Strangers at Carmichael Park

Left behind

Being abandoned by a parent is a child’s worst nightmare. Authorities say it’s happened more than once to a 5-year-old girl they found at on Thursday.

On the evening of Aug. 4, the child’s mother, 48-year-old Maria Jones of Sacramento, reportedly asked a few strangers to watch her daughter while she walked to a nearby store for a snack and something to drink, said Dep. Jason Ramos, spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. But witnesses told deputies that Jones didn’t return for nearly an hour, and that when she did, she stayed far away and didn’t pay much attention to her daughter.

When deputies arrived, contacted by the individuals watching the girl, Jones was sitting in a car with her boyfriend, “just neglecting the girl,” Ramos said.

Jones was arrested without incident and booked into county jail on a charge of child endangerment. The girl was placed into protective custody with the county’s Child Protective Services Agency, according to the report.

She did not show any other signs of neglect or abuse, Ramos said.

One witness told deputies that several people in the park told her Jones had done this on prior occasions.

Over the limit

A Carmichael man was arraigned last week on a felony drug possession charge, a few days after sheriff’s deputies found methamphetamine in the man’s car.

Devon Potter, 28, of Carmichael was behind the wheel of a 1987 Pontiac Trans Am when deputies pulled him over for stopping past the limit line of a stop light at Marconi and Walnut avenues in the Arden-Arcade neighborhood shortly after midnight on July 31, a sheriff’s report said.

A records check with the DMV revealed the car to be out of registration by five years, the report said. Deputies then found a small plastic bag containing a crystal substance they later determined to be methamphetamine.

Potter was not charged in Sacramento Superior Court with a vehicle code violation for passing the stop light limit line or for driving with an expired registration, online records show. He is next scheduled for an Aug. 16 settlement conference.

Kicking and screaming

A Carmichael man will be enrolled in a court-ordered batterer’s treatment program next month, following last week’s no-contest plea to a single misdemeanor count of false imprisonment.

Edward Stinson was arrested at the Marconi Avenue home he shares with his 48-year-old girlfriend, who accused Stinson of assaulting her during a drunken outburst around 12:30 a.m. on July 26.

“She said whenever he drinks excessively, he beats on her,” Ramos explained.

The account of what happened comes entirely from the victim, said Ramos, as Stinson did not give a statement to authorities except to tell them he thought he was going to have a seizure. Medics were called as a precautionary measure, and transported Stinson to a nearby hospital.

According to the report, Stinson started swinging and kicking once he arrived at the hospital in an attempt to get away from officers. He was restrained by medical staff and a 35-year-old firefighter whom he reportedly threatened by saying he would “find out where his family lived and hurt his family,” Ramos said.

Stinson was cleared by the medical staff and transported to the Main Jail. Ramos said the medics didn’t find any immediate health problems, except for Stinson’s intoxicated status.

Stinson pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor count last Wednesday and was sentenced to three years on probation.