Woman charged with murder after leaving her baby home alone for 10 days to go on vacation
An Ohio mother has been charged with murder after leaving her 16-month-old baby daughter home alone for 10 days as she went on vacation.
Kristel Candelario, 31, was arrested and charged after her baby girl, Jailyn, was found unresponsive at their Cleveland home, police said.
The youngster’s body showed “no signs of trauma”, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Investigators stated that “the child had been left alone and unattended for approximately 10 days and had subsequently died”.
An arrest affidavit states that the suspect had travelled to Puerto Rico and Detroit on vacation.
Detective Thelemon Powell Jr stated in the affidavit that Ms Candelario told police she had left her daughter “at home, all alone and unattended”.
Investigators said the suspect told them that when she arrived home she found her daughter to be “extremely dehydrated”.
The detective wrote that the baby’s pen “consisted of soiled blankets and a bottom liner, saturated with urine and feces”.
Ms Candelario is being held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on a $1m bond, online court records showed.
She had worked at Citizens Academy Glenville, an elementary school in Cleveland, since November 2022. According to WEWS-TV she has been fired from her position at the school.
“We couldn’t believe she was gone,” one neighbour, who didn’t want to be identified, told News5. “Jailyn, she was a happy baby, always smiling, always curious about stuff. She was a wonderful, wonderful baby.”
Another neighbour told the station that it is not the first time the suspect allegedly left her daughter alone.
“We keep telling her not to leave her by herself, not just me, my friend across the street too, but she always leave her by herself,” the neighbour said.
