Police Arrest Mother for Abandoning Children to Rob Neighbor

A Paradis Avenue mother faces charges of child neglect, assault and burglary after police report she left her child alone Oct. 19 while breaking into a neighbor's apartment.

Police officer Joseph Brazil was called to an apartment building at 58 Paradis Ave. at about 2 a.m. that morning, where he spoke with two residents who told him they'd returned to the building earlier that morning to see a skinny woman climbing out of their apartment window, according to Brazil's report. Though they didn't know the woman's name, they recognized her as a neighboring tenant of the building, later identified as Rondelle Hadrick, 22, of 58 Paradis Ave., Apt. 2nd.

One of the neighbors, a woman, noticed Hadrick had her Doni & Burke purse, which contained $400 in cash and medication, including several heart medicines, in it. The woman asked Hadrick to return the purse, she told Brazil, but Hadrick struck her in the face and grabbed her by the hair. Then, the woman said, a heavy-set man grabbed her by the neck and threw her to the ground. Next, Hadrick and the man fled the area on foot, Brazil reported.

While searching for Hadrick, Brazil learned she had an infant and toddler sons she had left behind in her apartment. Inside Hadrick's apartment, where the door had been left ajar, the officer found a screaming child in an unsecured child seat in the middle of the kitchen floor. The infant was crying and hanging halfway out of the seat. Brazil placed the child back in the seat and located another child sleeping in another room, according to his report. 

While Brazil was attending to the children, he heard a woman yelling downstairs, where officer Matthew Labine had remained. Hadrick, Brazil reported, had returned, and appeared to be intoxicated due to slurred speech, stumbling and an odor of alcohol. 

Brazil asked where she had been, and Hadrick said she'd been visiting her father. The couple who had made the report identified her as the woman who had stolen the purse and assaulted the woman. Brazil arrested Hadrick, charging her with breaking and entering, simple assault, and child neglect. She was also wanted on a Sixth District Court warrant.

Hadrick's children were left in the care of family, and the DCYF is investigating the incident. 

Hadrick appeared in Sixth District Court on the charges Oct. 19, where she was scheduled for a pre-arraignment hearing on Jan. 9, 2014, and remanded to the ACI Oct. 21.