Autumn Lee Beede, 39, was arrested Saturday and charged with one count of child neglect, the Pensacola News Journal reported Monday. Held overnight at Escambia County Jail, she was released Sunday on $5,000 bond, the News Journal said, citing county records.
A boy left alone for nine days, in squalor and with no electricity, survived by asking neighbors for food and water.
Autumn Lee Beede, 39, was arrested Saturday and charged with one count of child neglect, the Pensacola News Journal reported Monday. Held overnight at Escambia County Jail, she was released Sunday on $5,000 bond, the News Journal said, citing county records.
The documents did not reveal the boy’s name, age or his relationship to Beede, to protect his identity.
The child’s predicament was discovered on Valentine’s Day when a deputy from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office conducted a welfare check when a witness said the boy had been living on his own, sans adult supervision, with no running water or electricity since Feb. 5, the News Journal said.
Another witness had taken water to the boy’s home when he asked for it, and found conditions making it “not suitable for a child,” the News Journal said.
Stepping inside the home, the deputy was greeted with “the heavy odor of fecal matter,” he wrote in his report. The boy said he’d been living with a man until Feb. 5 but that he had gone to jail, and that the electricity and water had been cut off a month earlier for lack of payment.
He survived thanks for the kindness of friends and neighbors who gave him the food and water he asked for. He told police he hadn’t seen Beede since before Christmas, though she appeared to have left him some pastries on the front porch on Valentine’s Day.
