Crystal Ray, St. Ann, Missouri mom leaves 4 young kids at home during severe storms to go drinking and getting drunk as the infants cowered in fear for several hours amid sirens for tornadoes going off.
A Missouri mother has been accused of abandoning her four young children ‘for several hours’ during a wild storm, along with ‘threatening to kill the person’ who reported her to police.
Crystal Ray, 27, of St. Ann, St Louis County, was arrested on March 14 after she left her kids -aged, eight months, five, three, and eight – home alone for an unknown period of time while tornado sirens were going off, according to a complaint.
The mom is alleged to have left the four infants alone for ‘several hours,’ leaving them ‘extremely upset’ during the severe weather event, which brought brush fires, power outages, and downed power lines, the complaint stated.
St Ann, Missouri missing mom eventually found extremely drunk and belligerent
A concerned family member contacted St. Ann Police to alert them the youngsters had been left alone, according to First Alert 4.
Police eventually found Ray, who ‘exhibited signs of intoxication,’ according to the complaint.
During her arrest, the mom-of-four allegedly resisted going into custody, and began ‘wrestling with the officers, as well as, hitting and kicking them,’ police said.
Ray also ‘threatened to kill the reporting party,’ authorities said.
‘I believe defendant poses a danger to the victim based upon the nature of the offenses,’ Detective Christopher Cox wrote in the complaint.
The mom was charged with four felony counts of endangering the welfare of a child creating substantial risk and one felony count of resisting arrest.
Ray was jailed on a $75,000 cash-only bond, FOX2 reported. Online court records did not show an upcoming court date for her the outlet reported.
The whereabouts of the children’s father(s) remained unclear.
The episode mirrors a similarly troubling incident involving a Muncie, Indiana mother, Sandra Henriquez, 32, who left her two infants at home for 14 hours after she left home to get drunk before crashed into a pole on March 12, along with refusing to tell investigators her home address when they noticed a baby seat in her car and suspecting she had left her children home unattended to go drinking.
The woman’s little girls were only saved when neighbors called police saying they heard babies crying inside the home at 2:22pm, some 14 hours after leaving the family home in the dead of night to go drinking.
