GRETNA, La. (AP) - A 20-year-old New Orleans-area woman has been accused of abandoning her two toddlers with a babysitter she had found through Facebook.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office spokesman Glen Boyd says deputies reached Mariah Lebouef of Kenner after the babysitter called Sunday, saying Lebouef had been gone six days and wasn’t answering her phone.
“She just went AWOL,” Boyd said Monday.
Online booking records indicate that Lebouef was held Monday without bond on a fugitive warrant, with bond at $500 on a child desertion charge. It was not clear whether she has an attorney.
The babysitter said she’d agreed to watch the children from Tuesday until 2 a.m. Wednesday, but Lebouef showed up 2½ hours late and asked her to keep the 1- and 2-year-old because she’d been evicted, according to an arrest report described by NOLA.comThe Times-Picayune (https://bit.ly/2ptAHvy).
Lebouef agreed to pick up the children Wednesday evening from the babysitter’s house in Marrero, across the Mississippi River from Kenner but didn’t do that or answer her phone, the arrest report said.
The arrest report said that an unidentified third party brought Lebouef to the babysitter’s house Thursday, and she agreed - and again failed - to pick them up later Thursday.
Boyd told The Associated Press that Lebouef did answer her phone when deputies called and said she was in Houma, about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans.
“We pretty much told her she had to come back,” he said.
When she arrived at the sheriff’s office in Gretna, he said, “we asked her did she know where her children were. She said they were in Metairie,” an unincorporated area between Kenner and New Orleans. “They were in Marrero. We booked her with child desertion. “
The children were turned over to the state Department of Children and Family Services, NOLA.comThe Times-Picayune reported.
They were covered with bug bites, and Lebouef did not provide any diapers, clothing, food or medication, the arrest report said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.