Child was left at hotel while mom drank ‘bucket of fireball shots,’ Texas cops say
A mom and her boyfriend have been arrested in Texas after a child was found alone in a hotel while the two adults were drinking at a bar, police said.
Odessa police were sent to a Ramada Inn after calls of a child found on the evening of April 1. Officers found multiple people standing near a hotel room, who told them the mother had just arrived to take her child, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Police spoke to the 29-year-old mother, who initially said she’d been in a restaurant for 25 minutes. According to the affidavit, officers noticed the smell of alcohol on the woman, who told police she’d had two drinks.
A witness at the hotel told officials that a child had exited the hotel room “crying and was hysterical looking for their mother.” People searched for the mother for an hour before calling police, the witness said in the affidavit.
A bartender of a nearby establishment told police she recognized the mother and her 31-year-old boyfriend, and said they were the first ones in the bar when it opened at 8:30 p.m, the affidavit said.
According to the bartender, the mother had four drinks, with three of them being shots, the document said. She told officers the two were in the bar for about an hour and a half, the affidavit said.
Police spoke to the boyfriend of the mother, who said the children were his, but not biologically.
He told officers he was only absent from the hotel room for five minutes, but said the two had been drinking since 2 p.m. that day and “had been working on a bucket of fireball shots.”
The two were then arrested on a charge of endangering a child.
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Child was left at hotel while mom drank ‘bucket of fireball shots,’ Texas cops say."
