Middletown Mother Charged With Leaving Child Home Alone: Police

MIDDLETOWN, CT — A Middletown woman is due in court later this month on a charge that she left her young son home alone, according to police.

Police responded to an apartment complex at about 4:45 p.m. on Feb. 14 after receiving a report from a woman who said she discovered that the juvenile was home alone after dropping off her ex-boyfriend’s clothes, according to the police report.

The woman told the juvenile that she was going to call police to report that he was home alone and he immediately started crying and said that his mother was “going to beat him up and ground him forever,” police wrote in the report.

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The boy admitted to the woman that he is “always” at home by himself and that it was a secret, according to police.

The juvenile also asked the woman several times not to call the police and she recorded him on her cellphone because she was concerned for his safety, according to the report. She then told him to keep the door closed and locked and notified police of the incident.

Responding officers met with the juvenile, who they said appeared nervous, and asked if he was home alone. He said yes and told officers that his mother, Cynthia N. Turner, was at the hospital visiting someone.

Police observed several empty alcoholic beverage containers sitting on the kitchen counter inside the apartment. They also found several half-full alcoholic beverage containers on the floor next to a bed of what appeared to be Turner’s bedroom that were accessible to the juvenile, police wrote in the report.

Police also wrote that a large amount of food was left out on the kitchen table and counters and a “pungent smell of rotten food” was within the residence.

A neighbor told police that Turner had texted her asking if someone could pick up the boy from the school bus stop. She told Turner that she had to leave but would wait until the boy got off the bus. The neighbor also assumed that Turner would be home soon because the bus drops him off at about 3:45 p.m. and Turner’s boyfriend gets home around 4 p.m., according to the report.

Turner allegedly told the neighbor that the front door would be locked but the boy could go through a window that was unlocked.

The neighbor also told police that she fed the boy for the last two weeks after school because he is always hungry and says there is never any food at his residence, according to the report.

Police made contact with Turner, informed her of the complaint and advised her to come to police headquarters where she was arrested. The boy was released to his father and his stepmother, according to police.

Turner, 26, of East Main St., was charged with risk of injury to a child. She was released on a $5,000 bond and is due in court on March 29, according to state judicial records.

Image via Shutterstock

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