Police on Tuesday afternoon arrested a 46-year-old New Canaan woman who had left her child unattended in the back seat of a motor vehicle downtown.
At about 12:47 p.m. on June 19, officers were dispatched to Morse Court on a report of a 4-year-old child left in a vehicle, police said.
The complainant had been walking through the parking lot there when he or she heard a child’s voice coming from the back of the vehicle, according to a police report.
The child was alone and the front windows were open about three to four inches and the vehicle was turned off, the report said.
The temperature outside was 85 degrees at the time, it said.
“Upon arriving officers observed the child strapped into the carseat in the back seat,” the report said. “The officers were able to reach into the car through the opened window and unlock the vehicle and speak with the child who appeared flush in the face. The child indicated that her mother was in a store shopping but could not tell the officers what store.”
The woman, a Wakeman Road resident, returned to her vehicle while the police spoke with the child and said she’d only been in a store 10 minutes, the report said. The child was hers, she said, according to police.
Surveillance video from a retail shop nearby showed that the woman had parked at 12:43 p.m. and returned at 12:51 p.m., the report said.
She was charged with leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle, a misdemeanor offense.
Police released the woman after she promised to appear June 29 in state Superior Court in Norwalk.