A Florida mother has been charged after authorities alleged she left her four young children home alone while taking a multi-day cruise to the Bahamas.
Nathalie Belizaire, 29, allegedly left the children unattended at her North Miami Beach residence before boarding the Carnival Conquest on Friday.
She was arrested Monday after disembarking, where officers from the North Miami Beach Police Department were waiting. Police said the case began when one of the children’s fathers reported that the siblings had been left alone.
The father of Belizaire’s two-month-old child became suspicious after seeing her post about the cruise on social media. Belizaire allegedly told him that all four children were staying with their great-grandmother.
According to the arrest report, the father went to Belizaire’s apartment Saturday night. He said he could hear the children talking and saw that a television was on, but Belizaire was nowhere to be found.
First responders then forced their way into the home and found “all four minor children inside without adult supervision,” the report stated.
Police said the children were discovered “hiding together in the bathroom.”
Florida mother Nathalie Belizaire, 29, allegedly left her children alone at her North Miami Beach home while taking a Carnival Conquest cruise to the Bahamas
Police said all four of Belizaire’s children were found together in a bathroom after allegedly being left alone in the North Miami Beach home
Authorities have not disclosed the ages of all four children. They said one was two months old and another was two years old.
After Belizaire’s arrest, her attorney denied the allegations in comments to NBC6. “Of course she denies the charges…. One baby, the baby was born in July of this year. Who leaves a baby alone like that?” the attorney said.
Police alleged that Belizaire had arranged for the children’s great-grandmother to care for them. However, investigators said the great-grandmother never arrived before Belizaire departed on the cruise.
Belizaire also allegedly sent a text message to her brother asking him to check on the children during the weekend.
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The arrest was not Belizaire’s first encounter with law enforcement. She was arrested in January of last year after allegedly spraying a neighbor in the face with pepper spray.
In that case, police said Belizaire confronted the neighbor over claims that the woman had harassed her daughter.
The dispute reportedly began as a verbal confrontation. Belizaire then allegedly returned to her apartment, retrieved pepper spray and discharged it into the neighbor’s eyes.
She was charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm. The current status of that case remains unclear.
Officers met Belizaire in Miami after she returned from the four-day cruise (stock image)
Belizaire’s latest arrest follows a previous case in which she allegedly pepper-sprayed a neighbor in the face
When she was arrested in connection with the alleged child abandonment, Belizaire was reportedly first taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
She was then handed over to local police, and she is being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami. Belizaire is now facing four counts of child neglect without great bodily harm.
At her first court appearance, officials said Belizaire declined to provide a statement to investigators and invoked her right to remain silent.
Belizaire’s bond was set at $10,000, as a judge admonished her for allegedly abandoning the children.
‘You cannot make this up. It says she went on a cruise and left her children home alone,’ Judge Mindy Glazer said during the hearing, per NBC6.
‘These poor kids, four of them, were home alone for three days… I’m just grateful nothing worse happened to these kids.’