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Insets, from left: Aquania Aleshia Estes and Pitrez Floyd. Background: Medical personnel check out an abandoned 6-year-old girl in Deltona, Florida (Volusia County Sheriff’s Office).
A Florida woman received quite the surprise Friday afternoon when she saw a dog wandering in her front yard and found an unaccompanied little girl sitting on a chair in her carport. Now the child’s mother, 27-year-old Aquania Aleshia Estes, and her 29-year-old boyfriend Pitrez Floyd are behind bars.
The neighbor called the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office around 4:30 p.m. Friday after discovering the child and dog outside her Deltona home, a press release said.
Per deputies, the girl told the neighbor she was “hot, thirsty and hungry.” She brought the girl food, water, toys and clean clothes as deputies tried to find her parents. Cops posted body camera footage of deputies’ interaction with the girl.
“You don’t know if you live nearby here?,” a deputy asked.
The girl said she wasn’t sure.
“You don’t? You don’t know mommy and daddy’s name?,” the deputy responded.
She gave cops the name “Quana.”
“Why did mommy and daddy drop you off by yourself,” the deputy queried.
The girl said: “They had to go somewhere.”
She didn’t know when they’d be coming back.
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“Mommy and daddy needed to go charge their cell phones,” the child told deputies according to an arrest affidavit obtained by local Fox affiliate WOFL.
She also said she did not attend school.
Medical personnel responded to the scene to take the girl’s vital signs and they came back OK, per deputies.
Cops tracked down Estes and Floyd some nine hours later, the press release said. Body camera footage showed deputies were incredulous at the situation.
“You leave your kid on the side of the f—in’ road?” a deputy asked.
Estes explained that they were homeless and “live in the forest,” the video showed.
“She got out from where she was staying at,” the mother reassoned. “I was trying to go get water and food. We have been going through a rough time.”
Deputies discovered the area where the family had been living which consisted of two tents in the woods.
Estes and Floyd were arrested on charges of desertion of a child and abandonment of an animal. Both remained behind bars as of Sunday morning on a $51,000 bond. The girl was placed into custody of her grandparents.
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