3-Year-Old Sleeps Alone On Concrete Sidewalk While Mother Allegedly Goes To Nightclub

A young child was found sleeping on a sidewalk outside a Florida apartment complex while their mother allegedly went out to a nightclub. Deputies also found the mother’s two other children alone at home and arrested her when she returned to the apartment.

Shyla Heidelberg, 25, was arrested Saturday for allegedly going out to a nightclub and leaving her three children alone to fend for themselves. The kids were found after a security officer spotted Heidelberg’s toddler wrapped in a blanket and sleeping on a sidewalk outside an apartment complex in Fort Walton Beach, according to the New York Post.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office arrived at Gibson Street on Saturday at around 1 a.m. to find the toddler on the sidewalk outside the Choctaw Village Apartments. Deputies eventually found Heidelberg’s two other young children inside one of the apartment units. The sheriff’s office did not reveal the ages of the two other children that were found sleeping inside the residence.

The mother later returned home to find investigators and told them she had gone out to a nightclub about an hour and a half earlier, KIRO 7 News reported.

The mother “was arrested for child neglect after she returned to the apartment and admitted she had gone out to a nightclub about 90 minutes earlier, leaving the children unattended,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post shared Sunday.

Deputies charged Heidelberg with three counts of child neglect without great bodily harm. She was taken into custody and reportedly released Sunday.

The accused mother gave a brief interview to the New York Post and denied the allegations against her about leaving her children without adult supervision.

“It wasn’t true,” she told the outlet. “I have proof that I wasn’t in the club.”

The mother claimed her apartment’s Ring doorbell camera can disprove the allegations of her going to a nightclub while her children were left alone. She also claimed there were a few witnesses that could vouch for her not being at the nightclub.

“A couple people [sic] can state that I wasn’t there,” Heidelberg told the outlet.