Image of Shalesia Cave provided by Alachua County Sheriff’s Office.
In a distressing incident in Florida, a mother reportedly neglected her children to the point that they assumed she had passed away. Around 1 a.m., her 6-year-old son, diagnosed with autism, sought help from a neighbor, bringing along his younger sibling to alert them of the situation.
According to an arrest report accessed by Law&Crime, the autistic child was expressing through song that his mother was deceased, referring to the events surrounding Shalesia Cave’s oldest child.
The woman in question, 25-year-old Shalesia Cave from Gainesville, faced arrest in the early hours of Saturday. She faces three charges of child neglect not resulting in severe physical harm after authorities reportedly discovered her unconscious in a bathtub.
The unsettling details were documented in the arrest report by a Gainesville Police Department officer, who provided a vivid account of the scenario, noting:
After I shook and spoke loudly to [Cave], she gradually came to her senses but was still incredibly unaware of her surroundings or her physical state. [Cave] then started crying, slurring her words, and not being able to form understandable sentences.
Police were called to Cave’s apartment around 1 a.m. on Saturday after the neighbor reported speaking with Cave’s children, who had knocked on her door.
“The witness advised that she saw on her Ring camera [Cave’s children] were visibly distraught, knocking on her door stating that their mother was dead,” the arrest report states.
The neighbor says she placed Cave’s children inside her residence and then “rushed” to get another sibling, who was 10-months-old, out of Cave’s home. She called 911 while doing this.
“The witness advised that there was no one else in [Cave’s] residence,” the arrest report states. “[Cave] was the only person that was with her kids.”
Police say the children were “clearly distraught” while speaking with officers. Cave was found “breathing but unresponsive” and naked in her bathtub. It’s unclear what caused her to allegedly pass out.
While speaking to police, Cave “spontaneously uttered that she ignored her kids” earlier in the evening “so that they would go back to sleep,” per the arrest report.
Cave was released on her own recognizance over the weekend after being booked in the Alachua County Jail. She has been ordered to stay away from her children; it’s unclear whose care the kids are under.
The post Mom ‘ignored’ her children until they thought she was dead, her little kids ran over to neighbor’s apartment ‘visibly distraught’: Cops first appeared on Law & Crime.