The mother of a 2-year-old boy dumped on the doorstep of a home in Spring, Texas, last week says the incident is all a big misunderstanding.
Police launched an investigation after video captured an unnamed woman arriving at the home in a white sedan around 8:20 p.m on Oct. 17. The woman hurries toward the front door, carrying the toddler in the air by his arm before ringing the doorbell multiple times. She then rushes back to her car, leaving behind the child and two bags she was carrying.
The 2-year-old’s mother said she asked the woman to drop her son off while she was hospitalized. (KTRK / video screenshot)
“It was a very big misunderstanding,” the mother told ABC 13, adding that she’d asked the woman, who’s a family friend, to drop the baby off at his biological father’s house while she was hospitalized. The friend went to the wrong home, however.
“Had she waited just seven more seconds, the homeowner would’ve opened the door,” said Lieutenant Scott Spencer of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. “Maybe it would have started a discussion or a dialogue to direct her to the correct house to drop the child off.”
Startled, the homeowner dialed 911 after finding the toddler all alone on her porch. Child Protective Services took custody of the boy as police investigated, according to ABC News. It wasn’t until the following morning that a reporter at station KTRK in Houston found the child’s father, Willie Simmons, who immediately identified the toddler as his son after the reporter showed him the video.
“What if my neighbor wasn’t there?” said Simmons, who lived just next door to the house in question. “If my neighbor wasn’t there, my son would have been roaming up and down the street.”
Simmons told the station he’s never met or heard of this so-called friend that the mother of his child allowed to drop off their son.
“I never seen that lady in my life,” he said. “That was very irresponsible, and I feel the lady who dropped my son off needs to be held accountable.”
Authorities have done just that, charging the woman later identified as Keairra Woods with felony child abandonment, ABC 13 reported. Woods told KTRK the entire ordeal has left her feeling “destroyed” and blamed the child’s mother for the mix-up.
Telling her side of the story, Woods said she was only doing a favor for her best friend’s aunt, who’s the boy’s mother, by dropping him off at his father’s house. The woman was also warned that the child’s stepmother had a restraining order against the mother.
Woods noted that she was relying on GPS directions and the boy’s mother, who she was on the phone with at the time, to get to the right house.
“I followed the GPS,” she began. “Mind you, I’m still on the phone with her, so by the time I get to the house, I say, ‘Well I just pulled up to the house.’ She said, ‘OK, get out the car, get his bag and go to the door.'”
Woods said she described the many cars parked at the home, and said the mother should have known it was the wrong house.
“So I ring the doorbell, the lady walks like halfway to the door,” she added. “That’s when I took off running. And the only reason I took off running was because it was chilly outside and I didn’t have no sweater on.”
Woods said she was also trying to avoid interaction with the boy’s stepmother, who she thought was coming to answer the door.
“I never ran off and just left him there without even seeing if somebody came to the door. The woman was halfway to the door,” Woods concluded. “At the end of the day … it’s really the mother’s fault.”
Watch more in the clip below.
