Mom arrested after 3-year-old boy left in SUV in parking lot: Police
08/25/2019 2:26 pm PDT
By Kristina Garcia and Magee Hickey, WPIX
COLLEGE POINT, Queens (WPIX) -- A mother was taken into custody after she allegedly left her child in a car at a Queens parking lot Friday afternoon.
Police received a call about a child left in an SUV at a shopping center parking lot in College Point around 3:45 p.m.
When they arrived, officers found the 3-year-old boy inside the vehicle, with its windows rolled up and the engine off, according to police. The outside temperature at the time was about 75 degrees.
Video from Citizen app shows police and shoppers surrounding the vehicle, which had its windows broken into in an attempt to rescue the child.
He was taken to New York-Presbyterian Queens for observation, police said.
The toddler's mother, Mona Lisa Gomes, 32, had been shopping at a nearby Target and was arrested moments later.
Gomes faces charges of acting in a manner injurious to a child and reckless endangerment, police said.
“That's negligence on the parent's part,” Francis Reyes, a Target shopper, told PIX11 News.
Francis Reyes is a new father of a seven-month-old girl and this East Elmhurst resident, along with so many others shopping at this College Point Target, was horrified to hear that, according to police, the mother allegedly left her three-year-old son alone in her Honda CRV on Friday with the little boy's jacket on and the windows rolled up.
A passerby reportedly heard the little boy crying inside the car, saying he wanted air and his mother.
MORE: Mom arrested after 3-year-old boy left in SUV in Queens parking lot: Police - WPIX