Gabrielle Buckley, Decatur, Georgia woman charged with reckless conduct for leaving 3 year old boy alone at park at night to teach him a lesson for misbehaving. Boy was found wandering street in traffic.
A Georgia woman was arrested after her 3 year old son was found wandering through traffic at night after the boy’s mother abandoning him at a park bench to teach the ‘misbehaving’ boy a lesson.
Gabrielle Josephine Buckley, 28, of Decatur is accused of ‘recklessly’ leaving her son by himself at DeShong Park in Stone Mountain as a disciplinary tactic for being ‘unruly all day’.
According to the The Gwinnett County Police Department, more than half an hour had passed before the mother had called authorities to say that her ‘son was missing since she couldn’t find him,’ after having gone back to retrieve the ‘misbehaving’ boy –only to find the child was no longer where she had left him.
Abandoned boy wandered off when mother and boyfriend returned
Fortunately the boy was rescued by Will and Michelle Mosley as the couple drove along the streets just on 10pm that night, taking the boy to a nearby gas station and calling 911, WSB-TV reported.
‘I stopped in the middle of the road, turned on flashers and said, ‘Michelle, that’s a baby,’ the husband told the outlet.
According to a police report, Buckley ‘advised that her son has been unruly all day due to being disruptive, trying to fight her, and spitting on her so she came to the park to teach him a lesson to give him a form of discipline,’ a course of action that allegedly involved the mother abandoning her toddler son at a picnic table and driving in her boyfriend’s car to ‘the other end of the park to scare her son.’
Upon the mom and her boyfriend returning to the area ‘less than a minute later,’ the boy was no longer to be found.
Cruel punishment
It wasn’t until a further 38 minutes later that the mother contacted police to report her son missing, by which time the wandering boy had already been rescued by the husband and wife as they drove at night.
The boy was found a quarter of a mile away where he was left near South Rockbridge Road.
‘He was running that way in the dark, I almost hit him. No adults around. So I stopped in the middle of the road. He said ‘Can I get in the car? Can I get in the car?’ I said ‘Yeah, get in the car, get in the car,” Will Mosley told WSB-TV.
Gabrielle Buckley was arrested that night and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct. She was later released on $2500 bond.
The mother’s boyfriend, Lawrence Dozier-Joubert, also now faces a misdemeanor reckless conduct charge.
‘It’s not legal to punish your child in a manner that’s going to cause that child emotional or excessive physical harm,’ said Sgt. Collin Flynn with Gwinnett County police.
