Maryland mother left two children in hot car while she got her nails done in salon defying lockdown rules
RANDALLSTOWN, MARYLAND: A 22-year-old woman was accused of leaving her children locked inside a car amid soaring temperature as she got her nails done at a nearby nail salon, which was supposed to be closed due to the coronavirus restrictions.
Keontae Moodie, 22, of Baltimore, was charged with two counts of leaving her children unattended on Wednesday, May 13, after the police found two unsupervised children -- a 3-month-old boy and a 3-year-old girl -- inside a parked black Honda on a Randallstown street. The vehicle was not running but the temperature outside was touching the 70s, according to the police report.
Officers responded to the scene after receiving a report of child neglect at 12:19 pm on May 13. Authorities were forced to use a baton to break the backseat window of her vehicle in order to rescue the children trapped inside “after several attempts to locate the parent or vehicle owner,” police said. It was suspected that the children were locked inside the car for over an hour. Paramedics were called to the scene to make sure that the children were not hurt in any way and that they were not in distress.
Finally, Moodie was located inside First Class Nail Salon, which had its shades drawn. After an officer knocked on the store's door, an employee answered. When Moodie was questioned, she admitted to being the mother of the children as well as the owner of the Honda inside which the kids were locked in.
The store was told to shut down and not open for business until the COVID-19 restrictions in Maryland were lifted. The salon complied with the police's orders. “We’re still in a pandemic and we still don’t have the solutions to the problem. Getting your nails done should not supersede the safety of your family, your kids, and others who you put yourself in contact with,” said Sgt Vickie Warehime.
We reported earlier that a man from Georgia, Justin Ross Harris, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper Harris - who died after he was left sitting in his father's sweltering car for nearly seven hours - had been granted the right to appeal for a new trial, nearly four years after the original.
The case had made national headlines and had to be moved to Brunswick, Georgia after it was determined that he could not get a fair trial in Cobb County because of the publicity. Harris, a Home Depot web designer, said the death was an accident and that he thought he had dropped his son off at daycare on his way to work in Atlanta, Georgia. Prosecutors, however, charged him with murder, as well as cruelty to children and sexual exploitation of a minor. They pointed to evidence that showed that during the last few hours of his son's life, Harris was sending sexually explicit messages to a minor.
They argued that Harris wanted his son dead so he could pursue sexual relationships outside his marriage and called to witness eight women who testified they either had sex with him or exchanged sexual text messages, including nude photographs. "He was living a double life," said prosecutor Chuck Boring at the time. "This wasn’t just an affair type of thing. It was an obsession — pervasive acts constantly on the internet and meeting up with people... I think he was just having less and less time with the family to be able to do as much as he wanted and to live the life he wanted."