EUSTIS, Fla. — According to the Eustis Police Department, the case could have ended differently.
Investigators say 46-year-old Wendi Michelle Kirk left a baby on the asphalt in his car seat for almost half an hour. “It was an unusual call. We found a child, a three-month-old child, abandoned on the pavement,” said Eustis Police Chief Craig Capri.
Body camera footage shows the moment when police officers arrived at a martial arts center on West Ardice Avenue, in Eustis, on July 17th.
“The babysitter of this child, in the back-and-forth of taking from martial arts and other things, forgot she had taken the child and the car seat out, placed it on the pavement, and left,” said Chief Capri.
Kirk usually leaves the baby with her daughter, who’s 18, the incident report showed.
However, on that day, he was acting “fussy,” so she decided to take him along, according to police records.
By the time she realized the boy was missing, it was more than 30 minutes later. “You know how hot it is at 4 in the afternoon in Florida, 96 degrees,” Chief Capri said. “The heat factors in, so it was probably feeling more like 100 degrees.”
Records show that two 911 calls were made that day, one of which was from the martial arts center.
“I look out my front door and there’s a baby in a car seat, just sitting on the asphalt, and I cannot see any parents,” the caller stated in the file obtained and reviewed by Channel 9.
That call was made about a few minutes after the woman took off, police records show.
In the same body camera footage, it is possible to see – and hear – Kirk crying and visibly agitated when she went back to the location – approximately 34 minutes after she had left. “She’s human, she made a mistake, and she’s being held accountable for it,” Chief Capri said.
Although the case is bad, the chief says it could’ve ended much worse. “Not only was the child being in the heat, but what if someone hadn’t seen the child in a vehicle and run over the child? Thank God it didn’t happen,” the police chief said.
According to Eustis Police, the baby’s family did not want to press charges.
The baby was taken to the hospital but went home on the same day, unharmed.
Kirk was charged with child neglect and has been released on a 2-thousand-dollar bond.
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