GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Wyoming mother has been arrested after police said she left her two children alone overnight in a van at a Walmart parking lot in Duluth.
Duluth police told Channel 2′s Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson that Stephanie Walsh, 41, left the girls, who are 12 and 8 years old, alone in the car for hours while she walked to Dunwoody.
The children’s father was about to get custody when he told law enforcement in Wyoming she took off with the kids in April. On Monday, she was charged with
She is now facing charges of reckless conduct for leaving the children unsupervised. When an officer spoke to her, she said she had walked to Chamblee Dunwoody Road near Peeler Road from the Walmart in Duluth on Pleasant Hill Road.
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Officers estimated that’s about a five-hour walk.
Duluth Police officers were able to find her daughters, unsupervised, in a parked van at around 4:30 on Monday evening. The girls said they didn’t know where their mother was and that they hadn’t seen her since they fell asleep in the van the day before
Duluth Police officers were able to find her 12-year-old and 8-year-old girls in a parked van unsupervised at around 4:30 on Monday evening. The girls said they didn’t know where their mother was and that they hadn’t seen her since they fell asleep in the van the day before.
They weren’t sure how long they had been away from their home state of Wyoming.
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Soon after speaking to the girls, officers learned that they are from Wyoming and their mother had been driving them around the country since February, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in Wyoming.
The girls’ father reported the missing because he had concerns about their mother’s mental health.
He filed for emergency custody after Walsh took off with the kids. The father is now in Georgia working to get them back to home to Wyoming. He is hopeful to get his wife help once she’s released from the Gwinnett County Jail.
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