Shalesia Cave (Alachua County Sheriff’s Office).
A Florida woman allegedly “ignored” her children until they thought she was dead, with cops saying her 6-year-old son with autism went to a neighbor’s apartment with a younger sibling around 1 a.m. to tell them.
“[The boy with autism] was singing that his mother was dead,” an arrest report obtained by Law&Crime alleges about Shalesia Cave’s oldest child.
Cave, 25, of Gainesville, was arrested early Saturday morning and charged with three counts of child neglect without causing great bodily harm after police allegedly found her passed out in a bathtub.
An officer with the Gainesville Police Department recounted the scene in the arrest report, saying:
After I shook and spoke loudly to [Cave], she gradually came to her senses but was still incredibly unaware of her surroundings or her physical state. [Cave] then started crying, slurring her words, and not being able to form understandable sentences.
Police were called to Cave’s apartment around 1 a.m. on Saturday after the neighbor reported speaking with Cave’s children, who had knocked on her door.
“The witness advised that she saw on her Ring camera [Cave’s children] were visibly distraught, knocking on her door stating that their mother was dead,” the arrest report states.
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The neighbor says she placed Cave’s children inside her residence and then “rushed” to get another sibling, who was 10-months-old, out of Cave’s home. She called 911 while doing this.
“The witness advised that there was no one else in [Cave’s] residence,” the arrest report states. “[Cave] was the only person that was with her kids.”
Police say the children were “clearly distraught” while speaking with officers. Cave was found “breathing but unresponsive” and naked in her bathtub. It’s unclear what caused her to allegedly pass out.
While speaking to police, Cave “spontaneously uttered that she ignored her kids” earlier in the evening “so that they would go back to sleep,” per the arrest report.
Cave was released on her own recognizance over the weekend after being booked in the Alachua County Jail. She has been ordered to stay away from her children; it’s unclear whose care the kids are under.
The post Mom ‘ignored’ her children until they thought she was dead, her little kids ran over to neighbor’s apartment ‘visibly distraught’: Cops first appeared on Law & Crime.
