3-Week-Old Baby Abandoned On Side Of Road By Teen Mother

A 19-year-old mother has been charged for abandoning her 3-week-old baby on the side of a rural road for 12 hours. Not only did she abandon her little baby, but the teen mother lied to the police about the young baby’s whereabouts. This prompted an Amber Alert.

According to NBC News, Kendra Meaker, the teen mother, was charged in Stark County with obstrucion of justice and endangering the life or health of a child. Meaker’s bond was set to $100,000 on Friday.

The only thing that Meaker told a judge during a court appearance on Friday was that she had no job and no income.

During the hearing, Sherrif Jimmie Dison explained to the court that Meaker showed up to his department on Thursday morning and had told him that someone had nabbed her 3-week-year old baby, Mia Graci Thompson, out of her car after she went inside the post office in Toulon, to mail a package. That morning, police issued the Amber Alert.

Meaker eventually changed her story and confessed to Illinoi State Police and FBI that she had left her baby on the roadside, explained Dison. Her young baby was eventually found on the gravel roadside, where it had been from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Russell and Mary Jo Van Dran, the two volunteer searchers who found the abandoned baby, said they heard the baby crying while they were sitting in their truck. They found the young one in a culvert just off of a gravel road outside Toulon.

“My wife was out of the truck like a shot, cut down there and we had a heck of a time getting the baby out of the grass. She had her fingers interwoven in the grass,” Russell Van Dran said. “We were just at the right place at the right time. God had a hand in this thing too.”