Mom Arrested For Leaving 4 Young Kids Home Alone To Go On Cruise

00:00:10
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Sunday, October 4th, and a Florida mother has been arrested for child neglect. She left her four kids at home alone. I know the question you have now. First, where was she going? And second, how old were the kids? And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. A lot of parents will hear that this happened and go, what? That's wrong. She probably just stepped out for a second. It's a mom. She's struggling. She knows what she... We do a lot. And she just needed a break. Are you going to arrest this lady for leaving her kids at home for just a little bit, Robes?

00:00:50
Speaker 2: Maybe she went to the grocery store. Yes. Maybe she had a really important errand to run.

00:00:54
Speaker 1: An interview. A job interview.

00:00:56
Speaker 2: Could have been a lot of things. Yes.

00:00:58
Speaker 1: So let's hear it now before we quickly judge this woman for child neglect.

00:01:03
Speaker 2: She went on a four-day cruise to the Bahamas.

00:01:06
Speaker 1: Say what now?

00:01:07
Speaker 2: Yes, she went on a cruise, a carnival cruise line, and left her kids home alone.

00:01:13
Speaker 1: This could not be a true story.

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Guess, wait, I guess, I can't tell.

00:01:17
Speaker 1: Oh, it gets worse. That's right, it does get worse.

00:01:19
Speaker 2: Yes, the ages of the children. Now, there were, I saw the videos of what we think the older children might be, but we have a two-month-old and a two-year-old. And the other two, when you look at the police body cam video, when they got the kids out of the apartment home alone, they blurred the faces. But you could see two older girls, but they were probably like between six and seven and maybe eight and nine.

00:01:47
Speaker 1: You're good at this. So if you tell me that's what the ages of the girls, probably that's it. So you're telling me that a two-month-old and a two-year-old were left at home with At most a nine-year-old?

00:01:57
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what it looks like to me.

00:01:59
Speaker 1: And maybe eight. Yes. Maybe seven-year-old. Okay. Now, Robes, parents listening to this will, two things here with this story. There is no circumstance under which you would leave a two-month-old home alone. And Robes, she went on a cruise?

00:02:17
Speaker 2: She went on a cruise.

00:02:18
Speaker 1: Okay, but she had an expectation. So let me ask you one more thing. What was the expectation? Surely she was sending somebody over to the house, an adult, right?

00:02:26
Speaker 2: At one point, she texted her brother to go check on the kids. That was it. That was the only... And then she apparently told her great-grandmother that she was going to be dropping them off, but then she never did. You know, she probably messed up her timing, her packing. It all got too close to the time where she had to leave to disembark. So she didn't have time to drop the kids off. That's what doesn't make any sense about this story. According to just about everybody, the plan was to drop the four kids off with the great-grandmother. And the great-grandmother even said, yeah, I thought she was dropping the kids off. why on if you're able to get yourself to your cruise ship with your bags packed why didn't you make time to also drop your children off at your great grandmother's.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: House maybe she was running behind.

00:03:15
Speaker 2: Maybe she just yeah misjudged her timing and said whoops don't have time for that or i'll miss.

00:03:20
Speaker 1: The ship maybe okay this makes no sense you take through the take us all through the scenario but this is a 29 year old woman i don't know what age you would have to be before we would say oh she's This is old enough to know better. I don't care if you're a 20-year-old mother. Nobody does this. We're missing something about this story is what I am gathering, baby, because a rational person, a normal person, a decent person does not– you just will not do this. So I'm missing something about this story. Please do tell.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: This is a jaw-dropping story, and I don't know that it has a– A reasonable explanation to it because, yes, we know that 29-year-old Natalie Bellazer was charged with four counts of child neglect because, yes, she took this Carnival Cruise Lines Carnival Conquest ship from September 25th to the 28th. It was a four-day cruise, the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, right? Mm-hmm. So here's how it was all discovered. I think this is so interesting.

00:04:15
Speaker 1: She got on board, right? She took the cruise.

00:04:16
Speaker 2: She took the cruise. She was arrested. When the cruise ship came back into port in Miami, she was arrested. She was led off the cruise ship in handcuffs.

00:04:27
Speaker 1: Did she have a good tan? Well, no.

00:04:30
Speaker 2: I don't know. Have you seen her pictures?

00:04:32
Speaker 1: I've seen the kid. I've seen everything. But I'm saying that she should have a glow after four days. She just had a.

00:04:37
Speaker 2: Her hair was all done, looked really blonde. Yeah, it looked really nice. Yeah, it looked beautiful.

00:04:42
Speaker 1: Had a good time.

00:04:43
Speaker 2: But yes, it was the father of her baby. So she gave birth to a baby in July. The father of that baby... was looking on social media and sees his baby mama posting a cruise ship ticket, like a Carnival Cruise Line ticket, on her Instagram feed. Literally, this all unraveled because she posted her Carnival Cruise Line ticket on Instagram.

00:05:08
Speaker 1: So you're actually telling me she knew she left her kids and then is out there advertising that she's on vacation.

00:05:13
Speaker 2: Even worse, maybe, because it was the day before she was supposed to leave. She took a picture of the cruise ship ticket. posted it on social media. The dad calls her and says, what are you doing? Where are you going? And what's happening to our child, our two and a half month old? And she tells him on the phone that she's leaving the baby along with the three siblings with the great grandmother. But obviously he didn't believe her. This is what makes it so interesting because he decides the next day on September 26th to go by her apartment and look in the windows, look in the blinds, just to make sure that the kids are gone and everything's okay. He says when he gets up to her residence on September 26th, so now the kids have been alone for a full 24 hours, he hears kids' voices and the TV on. And he sits there for a while and he does not see or hear any adults, so he immediately calls 911.

00:06:10
Speaker 1: He didn't call her first?

00:06:13
Speaker 2: He calls 911.

00:06:14
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is the part of the story that now starts to make some sense. Robes, He knew already. He knew she was lying about leaving the kids. This means something else has been going on, and he knew she's done this before.

00:06:29
Speaker 2: Exactly. That had to have been the case, because why? If the other parent tells you they're going somewhere, and they tell you they're dropping off the kids, would you immediately the next day go to make sure that's true and check in through the blinds? No, you wouldn't. Or at the very least, I know his baby is only two and a half months old, so it's not like he can But you would probably either call the great-grandmother and say, how's she doing? You'd be checking in.

00:06:54
Speaker 1: Just checking in. You wouldn't go to the house and look in the window.

00:06:57
Speaker 2: Yes. And then immediately call 911. So then police obviously scramble, get over to the residence. And they knock on the door. No one answers. The kid, it's quiet. So I don't know if he went to go knock on the door, if they didn't answer, because that's probably, if you had to guess, she probably told them, don't answer the door for anybody. So that's why he ends up calling 911. When police try to come in and knock on the door, no one answers. So they end up having to bust through the door and break into the residence. And this is what the sad part is. They found the four kids hiding in the bathroom. Oh, that's heartbreaking.

00:07:37
Speaker 1: I guess maybe they are. Are they following instructions? Did she give them strict instructions not to open the door? That part of the story also was confusing to me. they had these strict instructions. It's almost as if they knew they were going to be alone for several days.

00:07:51
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:07:51
Speaker 1: Like don't expect, okay. Great grandma. I don't know what age she is. She's not able to physically go over there. Why would she just call and say, Hey, I couldn't get the kids to you. Can you get over to the house?

00:08:02
Speaker 2: Right.

00:08:02
Speaker 1: Why not? So maybe grandma is, doesn't drive. Great grandma does. I don't know. She's well enough to take care of a two month old. She's probably get around a little bit.

00:08:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:08:11
Speaker 1: This is some of the details here. We'll get more later, but babe, that, Does she really plan on those kids to be alone and feed? Feed themselves? There's a two-month-old. What the hell is a two-month-old?

00:08:23
Speaker 2: You and I just had this conversation. By the way, she just gave birth. Two and a half months, that's usually when people start to go back to work. But you're like, you've been in the thick of it trying to get that baby on a sleep pattern, get that baby fed, make sure the baby's routines are in place. This is hard for any grown-ass adult. to manage a two and a half month old schedule. They're oftentimes not sleeping through the night. And to think that a little girl, and when you see, if there's the body cam footages out there, they've blurred out the kids' faces. But when you see these little girls holding a two-month-old like she's a mama, that is heartbreaking. And I can't imagine, she's probably up throughout the night feeding the baby, burping the baby, thinking about just making sure the baby's sleeping in the right position, making sure there isn't a swaddling blanket that's too close to the baby's face. Think about how nervous she were about every breath Sabine took when she was that age.

00:09:16
Speaker 1: A child doesn't understand that. The child doesn't understand all those little things. Hell, parents don't understand sometimes, do parents? Help me with the dates again. The date of the cruise was what?

00:09:26
Speaker 2: She left on the September 25th. The cruise left. Okay. She was arrested when she disembarked on the 28th. So she was there for the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th. And police were trying to contact her. She wasn't answering her phone.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: Okay. The part I'm getting at was it's school time. So she took a weekend trip. Even that part of it, the kids not going to school, school would have been on Friday and on Monday.

00:09:48
Speaker 2: Yep. They were going to guess, I guess they were just going to miss Friday and Monday. Isn't that sad?

00:09:53
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Mama. We got you.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: So she can go on a cruise. They're just going to stay home from school on Friday and Monday to take care of the little ones.

00:09:59
Speaker 1: Is she ever going to? get these kids back?

00:10:01
Speaker 2: I cannot imagine she would. The great-grandmother confirmed to police that Her great-granddaughter told her she was going to drop off the kids. Again, why doesn't great-grandma call and say, what's going on? Where are the kids? Who's with the kids? The brother tells police, yep, my sister texted me the next day on the 26th, said, hey, you should probably check on the kids. Like, why didn't he go check on the kids? Why didn't he ask follow-ups? Who's watching the kids? Why are the kids alone?

00:10:29
Speaker 1: I don't know who this woman is at all, but some stuff you're describing here, babe, is.

00:10:36
Speaker 1: Mate, something's wrong with... Like, Robes, there's no way you could be on a cruise ship on a Saturday knowing that your two-month-old has been alone and being taken care of by an eight-year-old and not be freaked out, terrified. You don't just send one text to your brother and say, maybe you should swing by. Robes, something, to have no regard for that two-month-old, something is going on with this lady.

00:11:01
Speaker 2: Yes, and to your point... the arraignment hearing. It's all over the internet. But the judge just eviscerates her. And she almost seems like she can't believe what she's hearing.

00:11:12
Speaker 1: None of us can, babe. Right?

00:11:14
Speaker 2: So she says, you cannot make this up. It says she went on a cruise ship and left her children home alone. She's saying this to the attorney. Those poor kids, four of them, were home alone for three days. I'm just grateful nothing worse happened to these kids. And after that, her attorney actually has the audacity to ask for visitation. And the judge kind of laughs and says, I don't think I want to do that. Who leaves their four little kids alone to go on a cruise? And this is when the attorney says, well, it's just an allegation. She denies the allegations.

00:11:44
Speaker 1: This is when it gets hilarious.

00:11:45
Speaker 2: And this is when it gets hilarious. The judge goes, they arrested her disembarking from the cruise ship. And then the attorney says, and then the question is, who was responsible for the kids at the time? The judge? Usually it's the mother. You know, the woman that gave birth to them? And that's when their attorney's like, well, it's not just mothers who are in charge of children, judge. It's also fathers and grandparents and other people. The judge was like, yeah, no, I'm going to order a stay away charge.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: So the defense is going to be that someone else, so she said, an understanding that maybe somebody else would have been taking care of the kids.

00:12:18
Speaker 2: Correct. Correct.

00:12:19
Speaker 1: Okay, but still, you left. You walked out the house knowing nobody was there. Now, what's the rule there? Well, it was an expectation. Somebody was supposed to come by in the next 10 minutes, next half hour, which should have been fine, or next hour. Is that going to be the argument?

00:12:31
Speaker 2: That absolutely is going to be the argument. She's being held on $ 10, 000 bail. Her kids are in foster care. But when we come back, we'll tell you what the guidance is on leaving kids home alone. It's honestly really fuzzy. Welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ. We are talking about a, it's this heartbreaking story, but it's really an unthinkable one as a mom of four, including a two and a half month old decides to take a four day weekend cruise to the Bahamas while leaving her children home alone. We don't know the ages of the older two. We just see the video and it looks like, you know, the most I would give those older two girls, eight and ten. But it might be seven and nine, even six and eight. They were little, cute little thin things. You couldn't, they were just little doll babies holding a little doll baby.

00:13:30
Speaker 1: You know, I wonder though, and I would like to talk to the older, I mean, I mean. Rose, those kids took care of each other for four days, 34 days. That's kind of impressive.

00:13:40
Speaker 2: It is impressive.

00:13:41
Speaker 1: I mean, how did they feed the two-month-old? With bottles? They had to do this. No kid should have to do this. But, Rose, I'm still impressive. If anything else, I applaud the kids.

00:13:52
Speaker 2: I would think this isn't the first time they've had to do this.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: You make a good point.

00:13:55
Speaker 2: I would think that they have had to feed baby sister a lot and wake up throughout the night and make sure that the kids are like that older. Those two older girls are the mamas of the family. I mean, you could even see the way they were holding the baby. It actually kind of was heartbreaking.

00:14:10
Speaker 1: I mean, they probably helped mom out. Who knows what's been going on with mom and. Hell, they might have said, Mom, you go have a good weekend. We got it. We don't know.

00:14:18
Speaker 2: Yes, we don't know the dynamics, but obviously we know that that is not okay. And, you know, it is sad to think that those four kids are in foster care. Doubtful they're all together. I mean, I would love to think they are.

00:14:28
Speaker 1: Wait, they're in foster care now?

00:14:29
Speaker 2: They're in foster care now.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: What about the older? Wait.

00:14:33
Speaker 2: All four kids are in foster care.

00:14:34
Speaker 1: Why isn't the two-month-old with dad?

00:14:36
Speaker 2: There was a reason why the two-and-a-half-month-old wasn't with dad to begin with, I guess. I don't know.

00:14:40
Speaker 1: But then he's the one who comes in heroically and saves the kids when they're a child kind of a thing. Well, we don't know what's going on there.

00:14:45
Speaker 2: We don't know the details. It's just that's the reporting that the kids are in foster care.

00:14:49
Speaker 1: Why couldn't they go with grandma or great-grandma? And also, who's great-grandmother? The kid's great-grandmother or the mom's great-grandmother?

00:14:56
Speaker 2: I think it's the kid's great-grandmother and it's her grandmother. Yes, age-wise. That's But she's 29, and look, the National Safe Kids campaign, you looked this up before, and unfortunately we've had other stories similar to this where we've had to look this up before.

00:15:10
Speaker 1: We had this data already.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: That's our point, yes. You're like, oh, wait, let me go pull it up from the last story. And remember the last story was actually not that long ago, July 4th. This was not quite as egregious, but it still landed this couple with felony charges of child abuse, but they went downstairs... to the pool to have a drink while their two kids were upstairs in the hotel room. This was in Key Largo.

00:15:32
Speaker 1: Toddler-like, though, right?

00:15:34
Speaker 2: Oh, I can get it.

00:15:34
Speaker 1: This wasn't a baby.

00:15:35
Speaker 2: So this was a 40-year-old and a 43-year-old couple, right? So these were definitely old enough to know better. They went to jail.

00:15:42
Speaker 1: No, the kids' ages.

00:15:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to think what the.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: Because you remember so many parents came to their defense.

00:15:48
Speaker 2: You know, it just had two young children. We didn't ever get their ages, so we don't know. But one of them was crying and... Our guess was they were young. They put them down in the cribs and thought, oh, they're going to take their nap. They'll be okay for 45 minutes while we go have a drink. But someone in the hotel room heard the baby crying, called police, and they got arrested.

00:16:09
Speaker 1: But that was one where overwhelmingly it felt like people were coming to this couple's defense, given that we've all been there and done something. This wasn't the most egregious thing. We get it. I think the fact that they included that they were downstairs at the pool drinking.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: Drinking.

00:16:23
Speaker 1: Made it sound really, really awful. But Rose, what parent hasn't done this? Not this. No. Not the cruise thing. Put to step out for a minute or I got to get to an appointment and the other parent is running behind or just had some little window that the kid was left alone at an age you weren't necessarily comfortable. Yes. But something caused it. Look, you've had one. Certainly it's happened if you've got two or three kids. Every parent in some way relate to the desperation of having to be away from the kid at the house.

00:16:54
Speaker 2: But to run a small errand and usually with a child not under the age of 10. I mean, I think that once it like, yes, I like 10 and under and then watching other kids. You have to be so careful about all of that. But there isn't clear guidance there. National Safe Kids campaign says kids should not be left alone before the age of 12. What do you think about that?

00:17:16
Speaker 1: As a general rule, you know, they give you some kind of baseline. They give you some kind of guidance. It makes sense. There's some 12 years old. There ain't no way in hell you would leave at home. There are some 10 years old, 10 year olds. You would be OK. This one's got it. It just depends on the maturity of the child.

00:17:30
Speaker 2: But that's just for a couple hours. That's not overnight.

00:17:33
Speaker 1: Oh, nobody's recommending you leave.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: Exactly. I just wanted to make sure we made that point because this woman was going to be gone for four days and three nights.

00:17:40
Speaker 1: Like, no. Your husband can't take a weekend trip and leave the 11-year-old at home.

00:17:44
Speaker 2: It's never okay. Look, and I remember the debate when the kids, the National Save Kids campaign said kids should not babysit before age 15. That's pretty high. I started babysitting at the age of 13.

00:17:53
Speaker 1: What was Ava when she was babysitting Sabine the first time?

00:17:56
Speaker 2: I think 12, 13. But Ava also was about... And she was one of the oldest young kids I've ever met in my life. She is an old soul. There are kids who do behave differently. Anna, not quite as much as Ava, but Ava was always that older. She just had that. And she had a lot of experience with her younger sisters, with her dad. So I think all of that has to be taken into consideration. 15 is pretty high. Now with a young infant. Agreed. You want at least a 15-year-old. I wouldn't even trust a 15-year-old with an infant.

00:18:24
Speaker 1: Two-month-old, maybe?

00:18:25
Speaker 2: No, a two-month-old, I would need someone with CPR training and at least 21. I mean, that's how I would feel. But yeah, there are three states in the United States, only three, that actually specify ages. Does that mean this is illegal, that they put this into law?

00:18:41
Speaker 1: You cannot leave your kid at home alone.

00:18:43
Speaker 2: No.

00:18:44
Speaker 1: Under these ages in specific states and robes, these range all over the damn place. And you'll be shocked at the high and shocked at the low.

00:18:52
Speaker 2: I am. I am. So this is where Illinois stands. I would never guess this. You should not leave your kids home alone before the age of 14. Like I said, I was babysitting folks all in my neighborhood at 13.

00:19:07
Speaker 1: Different ages and different places. 14, yes, it seems high. I don't know if any state should have a specific number. It's just so general and so different for so many kids. What this is allows them to charge parents. You're allowed to charge parents with a crown if you leave kids at home under these ages.

00:19:25
Speaker 2: You cannot imagine charging a parent leaving a 13-year-old home alone while they go out to dinner. We do that all the time. That would not be anything. Think about Sabine.

00:19:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rose, we struggled with this in the past couple years. Sabine is now 13, but Rose, she was 10, she was 11, and 12. We're trying to figure out, okay, I'm going to step away for a minute. Is it okay? And even her walking by, it's all kinds of stuff.

00:19:47
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: We, and you know this, earlier on, when we would step out and she was at home alone, I was annoying. I was checking on her every few minutes. Yes.

00:19:56
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, constantly. Oregon, you have to be 10, and then Maryland, it's just eight. Yeah.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: They don't want to criminalize parents for leaving a kid home at a certain age. Then, I don't know. I don't think there should be an age. It's different. Every kid is different.

00:20:15
Speaker 2: Every kid is different. That is. And girls to boys at those ages are significantly different. I would trust a 12 or a 13 year old girl with, you know, five or six year old. I would never trust a boy that age. I'm sorry, but I just wouldn't.

00:20:30
Speaker 1: Bro, a boy five to like 25, you shouldn't trust.

00:20:35
Speaker 2: Nope, just they don't have the same mindset. I'm sorry. Generally speaking, obviously there's individuals that are different. I liked what Kansas did. The Kansas Department of Children and Families said this. Young children from zero to six should never be left alone for even a short period of time.

00:20:50
Speaker 1: Agreed. Next line.

00:20:52
Speaker 2: Kids six to nine. can be left alone for only short periods of time. Agreed. Children 10 and older can be left alone depending on other factors. I think that's actually very sane and, generally speaking, should be a good sense of guidance.

00:21:07
Speaker 1: Six-year-old. They said six to nine.

00:21:09
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that's pretty young.

00:21:10
Speaker 1: Six-year-old. They said short periods of time, but that's the guide. To your point, when we first started, the guidance is all over the place.

00:21:16
Speaker 2: It is. It is all over the place. And again, yes, I mean, short periods of time, like 10 minutes to go, you know, 15 minutes to go on a one mile run, maybe. But nope, I wouldn't. I would be six years old is too young to me.

00:21:27
Speaker 1: But think of where Kansas and Illinois are geographically in this country. And one state is saying you can leave a six year old. Another state saying you can't even leave a 13 year old. That's wild. That's wild. So they're just all over the place. This really is just personal for parents. What was the lady? Where was it that she got arrested? Sentenced? Let her five-year-old walk in the neighborhood. Yes.

00:21:50
Speaker 2: She let him walk to a pond. It was a half a mile.

00:21:53
Speaker 1: Where was that?

00:21:53
Speaker 2: To go get a... I'm trying to remember where that was.

00:21:56
Speaker 1: Anyway, this comes up.

00:21:58
Speaker 2: Constantly.

00:21:59
Speaker 1: It does, Robes, and it's different for every parent. There was a five-year-old in that situation, which had toddlers in the situation at Key Largo, and you got a two-month-old and two-year-old in this situation. It's all over the place. Should there be... I don't know, Robes. But we know what this woman did was wrong. There are some that are just clear... Now, if there is true confusion, I'm listening. However, her behavior didn't act like a woman who gave a damn about a two-month-old. Most mothers I know who aren't sure what's going on with their two-month-old would have jumped off that ship and swam back to shore to go find her kid.

00:22:34
Speaker 2: Yes. And I think that was what the judge was trying to say. Mothers know where their kids are. Mothers know. She's like, yes, okay, fine. But there's no way this woman didn't know what was happening with her kids. And I would imagine her own texts to her brother saying, hey, can you check on the kids might be the most damning of them all.

00:22:53
Speaker 1: If they want to take this one to dry out, we are there for this one. Oh, yeah.

00:22:56
Speaker 2: This is going to be a slam dunk. All right. With that, everyone, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk soon.