Mom and grandma arrested after kids locked in shed: Deputies
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Left inset: Tamara Stoiber (Alachua County Sheriff”s Office) Right inset: Sabine Thrift (Alachua County Sheriff’s Office) Background: A shed in the 13500 block of Northeast U.S. Highway 301 in Alachua County, Florida (Alachua County Sheriff’s Office)

A mother and a grandmother of two young kids have been arrested after the children were found unsupervised and locked in a dark shed next to a highway, authorities said.

Tamara Stoiber, 37, and Sabine Thrift, 59, have each been charged with two counts of child neglect, while Stoiber has also been charged with two counts of false imprisonment, according to court records. They are both in the custody of the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.

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Early Saturday morning, at about 3 a.m., a “concerned citizen” called a sheriff’s deputy saying two children were abandoned in the area of Waldo, a small town northeast of Gainesville. Deputies arrived to the 13500 block of Northeast U.S. Highway 301 and spoke with two witnesses who had found the children, both of them 5-year-old girls, locked in a shed.

The witnesses told law enforcement that the kids were locked inside the structure with a brick placed against the door, “apparently to prevent them from leaving,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a social media post. There was no electricity or running water inside, and a large knife was placed on top of one of the girls’ backpacks “and could have been a hazard if the knife would have fallen or been knocked over while the children were sleeping,” an arrest report of Stoiber stated.

Furthermore, the girls “had been left without food or any way to call for help.”

The children were not severely hurt, but deputies described both girls as being malnourished, disheveled, and dirty, Orlando Fox affiliate WOFL reported.

“I want you to also keep in mind that these young girls are probably extremely scared, frightened, it’s dark, it is very early between midnight and 3 to 3.30 in the morning,” Alachua County Sheriff’s Office Captain and Public Information Officer Chris Sims told the outlet. “There is no lights on the outside of this shed either.”

He also pointed out how close the shed is to the nearby Highway 301, just over 100 feet.

“So, Heaven forbid these young girls walk out of the shed looking for help, they would unfortunately probably wander into a major highway and, and, you know, catastrophic results would probably take place,” Sims added.

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