A Texas woman was recently arrested after intentionally leaving her 16-month-old child alone to travel out of town to see a man she met on a dating app, according to Lone Star State law enforcement.
The Killeen Police Department says that 25-year-old Reese Louise Myers is charged with one count of abandoning or endangering a child.
The incident in question happened in the middle of summer last year. The suspect was finally caught earlier this month near the small city of Barstow in Southern California’s Inland Empire region. This week, she just got back to Texas.
According to a spokesperson for the Killeen Police Department, police were called to an apartment on West Hallmark Avenue in Killeen late in the morning of July 28 to check on the welfare of a child. Killeen is a large city about 70 miles north of Austin.
The police said in a statement that they were told a child was hanging out near a broken window and that a mean dog was trying to attack the child.
“When the police arrived, they saw a child sticking out of the window that had been fixed with cardboard and plexiglass.” “It was not broken.”
Police say the child was found inside the apartment by himself or herself, wearing “and nothing else.” It was also said that the toddler had poop on their skin and clear signs of diaper rash.
“Officers did a sweep of the apartment and found the child to be alone with two dogs,” the police department said in their report of the search. When the police called the child’s mother, she told them she was in San Antonio and had been there since the day before.
Killeen is about 160 miles south-southwest of San Antonio.
The child was taken to a nearby hospital and then given to Child Protective Services by the state.
A police report obtained by Waco-based Fox affiliate KWKT says that when police called Myers, she allegedly said she had gone to the Alamo City to see a man she met on Hinge.
The mother is said to have told police that she had left her child with a babysitter she had met on Facebook. The police then called the alleged babysitter to find out what she had to say about what happened.
“Officers then called the babysitter, who told them she had babysat for the suspect in December of last year but had not talked to her since,” the police report says. “She showed the police her Facebook messages, but there were none after December 2023.”
The police also said that the house was set up in a way that made it look like Myers planned to leave her son alone.
People say that safety measures were clear: most doors were shut, a baby gate blocked the kitchen, the door’s deadbolt was locked, and all but one window was locked and shut, except for the one that the boy was seen hanging out of.
The police said, “Officers told the mother to go back to Killeen.”
It was said that request was not met. An officer from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office caught Myers on November 5.
Records from the state of California show that the suspect was arrested somewhere on the huge Fort Irwin Army Base, which is about 1,365 miles from Killeen.
Myers was freed from jail in California on Tuesday, and the Killeen Police Department arrested him that same day.
