It was late afternoon Monday, March 25, and I was at my desk when the police scanner spit out a report that piqued my interest.

Two small girls were in the back seat of a vehicle parked in front of Pagoda Express restaurant on The Concourse in downtown Waterville with no adult around, and they had been there about a half-hour.

I grabbed my keys and notebook and flew out the door, heading to The Concourse.

Once there, I spied a small silver Honda sport utility vehicle parked in front of Pagoda, its engine running and driver’s side window halfway open.

In the back seat sat two little girls, who I later learned were 3 and 5.

I looked around. There was no adult anywhere, except for two young women parked in a car nearby. I suspected they were the ones who called police about the unattended kids. A police cruiser was cruising the lot and stopped.

As I stood by the Honda, a young man appeared behind me as if out of nowhere, walked to the SUV and climbed in.

Police Officer Matt Libby, who by then had gotten out of the cruiser, walked over and talked to the man.

I talked to the two young women in the nearby car.

They said they had called police because the children had been in the SUV, alone, for at least 45 minutes.

“We showed up here around 4 o’clock and went over to Dollar Tree and we noticed two girls in the vehicle,” said the woman in the driver’s seat. “We were looking for an adult and we didn’t see one, so we finished at Dollar Tree and came back and they were still there, alone. We went to the library, came back and noticed the kids were still there. We were in the library a good 25 minutes.”

The women, both 22, were concerned. They took a photo of the Honda’s registration plate and called police. One, a substitute teacher, and the other, who said she works with people with autism, did not want to leave until police arrived. Anyone could have just taken the children, they said, and morally, they felt obligated to protect them.

After Libby left the scene, I approached the man who left the children alone. He said he had ordered takeout and was sitting in the restaurant by the window, waiting and watching the little girls the whole time, which he claimed was only about five minutes.

He seemed irritated that police had been called and said he was born in Boston, where one might expect bad things to happen, but not here in Waterville, where people should mind their own business. I asked if he had learned anything or had anything to say about the situation, as I planned to write a column about it.

“It’s not newsworthy in my book,” he responded and drove off.

I called Waterville Deputy police Chief Bill Bonney to get his thoughts about the incident, and he pulled no punches in his assessment.

City police have charged numerous people over the past couple of years with endangering the welfare of a child for leaving them unattended, according to Bonney, who cited a case from 2006 in which a man kidnapped a child out of a vehicle in the Walmart parking lot but was caught soon afterward.

Whether police file charges for leaving children unattended depends on the circumstances and what an officer feels he can prove, Bonney said. In The Concourse case, the parent or guardian claimed he had his eyes on the children the entire time and he was not charged, but Libby sought to educate him about why children should not be left alone, according to Bonney.

Leaving children unattended in a vehicle can lead to a host of problems, not the least of which is that in a matter of seconds, someone could snatch them.

“It’s a dangerous thing to do, so we try to do an educational piece and sometimes people just don’t understand where we’re coming from,” Bonney said. “We hear, ‘Well, it’s Waterville — nothing ever happens here.’ Stuff does happen here and the one time it does, you don’t want it to be your child.”

In this case, police called the state Department of Health and Human Services to notify that office about what occurred, as police are mandated reporters for child abuse and neglect. Children are supposed to be kept safe, and leaving them unattended is not doing that, according to Bonney.

The two women who reported the incident absolutely did the right thing by calling police, he said.

He noted that more than 40 registered sex offenders live in Waterville, a city of only 13 square miles. That alone, he said, should be reason enough for people not to leave a child alone in a vehicle.

Beyond that, endangering the welfare of a child is a Class D crime, punishable by up to 364 days in jail, he said.

And if that’s not enough reason to obey the law, then I don’t know what is.

 

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 31 years. Her columns appear here Mondays. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com.

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