Police arrest mother of 2-year-old boy found alone on Modesto street Thursday night
The mother of a 2-year-old boy found alone in the middle of a Modesto street on Thursday night has been arrested on suspicion of child endangerment.
A witness called police around 8 p.m. to report a child in the street and a vehicle driving away from him in the 600 block of Catalina Way, behind Doctors Medical Center, said Sgt. Kalani Souza.
He said the boy was crying and hysterical. He was taken to Doctors Medical Center for an evaluation and found to be uninjured.
Modesto Police posted a photo on social media of the boy sitting on a gurney in an ambulance and asked for the community’s help identifying his family.
At 11 p.m., the boy’s mother, 23-year-old Alondra Rodriguez of Stockton, called police from the parking lot of the Walmart on Plaza Parkway to report her son had gone missing from her vehicle.
The mother told officers “somehow the 2-year-old went missing while she was delivering orders for Door Dash,” Souza said. “The investigation revealed that Alondra was in the area where the child was found during one of these deliveries.”
Rodriguez told officers she had no idea how the child got out of the car and last remembered seeing him in the car just before 9 p.m. on McHenry Avenue.
According to radio traffic of the incident, the 911 caller told a dispatcher she saw a small silver vehicle that “dropped off” the boy then “drove off eastbound on Catalina.” The caller said the boy was so upset he was vomiting.
Rodriguez was arrested on suspicion of child neglect. Souza said detectives are following up on the investigation along with Child Protective Services, which took custody of the child.
Rodriguez had not been formally charged as of Friday morning. She remains in jail with bail set at $50,000.
A neighbor who lives on Catalina Way said the block was busy Thursday night because some of the other neighbors had people over. So when she heard a screaming child, she assumed a parent had just taken their child away from the get-together to calm down from a tantrum.
Soon, however, there were about eight police cars swarming the area. The neighbor said she came outside to see what was going on but stayed on her porch so she wouldn’t interfere.
“It’s terrifying somebody would leave their little one, but it does happen,” she said.
This story was originally published April 8, 2022 at 10:50 AM.
