HAMILTON COUNTY, Ohio — The Hamilton County, Ohio prosecutor announced an Indiana woman accused of abandoning her 5-year-old boy on a road outside Cincinnati. Heather Nicole Adkins was charged with kidnapping and child endangerment.
The prosecutor said there was another adult in the car with Adkins when the abandonment took place, but that person is not being charged because there was nothing that legally required them to intervene.
Adkins was arrested in Kentucky in February at a gas station on an unrelated charge. When she was arrested, police said she gave them a false name but they were able to match her social security number.
NOTE: The above video is from a previous report on Adkins arrest.
It wasn't until later that they found out she was wanted in Ohio on charges related to the abandonment of her 5-year-old son.
Police in Colerain, Ohio, said the 5-year-old, who is nonverbal and has autism, was driven to Colerain Township. According to court documents, the child was left at a dead-end street, which is near a creek that was flooded.
The boy was found walking along the road about an hour after being abandoned.
James Love, of the Colerain Township Police Department, said officers spent hours knocking on doors, hoping they'd find the child's family.
"I fully expected to find his parents in the morning," Love said. "Oftentimes, children, especially those who are autistic, wander out of bed and the parent calls later frantic. But by 10 a.m., no call."
That's when he said he "knew something wasn't right," and it became a criminal investigation. That investigation led to the arrest of Adkins.
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In a jailhouse interview with a reporter from WKYT, Adkins gave conflicting information on who she left the child with before admitting she didn't leave him with anyone.
When asked why she would abandon him and leave him somewhere all by himself, Adkins responded, "To save him from me."