KNOXVILLE, TN - Another mother-of-the-year candidate was arrested by Knoxville police after she left her one-year-old child alone in a car for hours after getting “extremely intoxicated” while out for her birthday the previous evening, Law & Crime reports.
Ashlynn Elizabeth Taylor, 20, was arrested and charged with one count of felony child abuse, neglect and endangerment of a child under eight, and one count of felony leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle, court records showed.
Officers were dispatched to a home Monday morning after a man found Taylor in a family vehicle, local CBS affiliate WVLT reported. The vehicle was not hers, authorities said, and she didn’t know how she ended up in the car.
Responding officers spoke with Taylor, who told them she’d been out celebrating her 20th birthday the previous night and admitted being “extremely intoxicated.” She confirmed to officers that the car wasn’t hers and she didn’t know how she got inside.
A friend of Taylor’s told police that she (Taylor) had called her just prior to 3 a.m. and asked her for money, then changed her mind and asked to be picked up. Taylor told her friend that she had her one-year-old daughter with her.
The friend picked up Taylor and her baby, however, once back home, Taylor refused to get out of the car. The friend briefly took the baby inside the house, however, the child started crying, so she brought the child (the child’s name and sex were not noted) outside to Taylor, according to WBIR. The friend told police that she cracked the windows of the car and turned off the ignition.
At around 8:00 a.m. the next morning, the friend’s sister was leaving for school and noticed the baby alone in the car. She couldn’t locate Taylor, so someone contacted Taylor’s grandmother to get the baby.
According to AAA, the temperature between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. on August 17 was between 78° and 83°. According to the National Weather Service, the temperature inside a closed vehicle at that exterior temperature could rise to 109° in just 20 minutes.
Authorities said that Taylor left her child alone in the vehicle and ended up sleeping in a neighbor’s car.
Police were able to determine that Taylor left the vehicle at around 6:00 a.m. According to court records, it was determined that the heat index reached 88 degrees with relative humidity at 72%.
Taylor was scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 19, court records showed.
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