A Wisconsin mother has been charged with child abandonment and neglect after she allegedly kicked her 12-year-old son out of the car along Interstate 94 in Waukesha County because she was angry about his grades.
Police found the crying boy walking along the busy highway during rush hour on Thursday, WTMJ reported. He told them he’d been walking to Sylvan Learning Center for tutoring and that he’d been walking for about 5 minutes.
But police noted there were no houses nearby, he was not wearing high visibility clothing, the clothes he was wearing were “thin” for the weather, and he had no phone or anything other way to contact help.
Then the boy said he and his mother had argued about grades and “school work habits,” and she kicked him out of the car and drove off.
Police picked up the mother, Flor Escalante, 43, at Sylvan Learning Center, apparently waiting for the boy. The tutoring center is about two miles from where the boy was located.
Escalante told police that her son “didn’t appreciate everything [she] did for him” and that she kicked him out “so he can understand what labor is.” She said she thought traffic was moving slowly enough on the busy highway that he’d be safe and that she made a U-turn to pick him up but couldn’t find him. That’s when she drove on to Sylvan Learning.
When investigators attempted to explain how dangerous it was to dump a child along a busy highway as she had done, she asked what she could do to “lower her charges.” Escalante was “visibly upset about the situation, but did not seem to grasp the recklessness and negligent nature of her actions,” the criminal complaint says.
Escalante has been charged with child abandonment and neglecting a child. She was released on a $500 bond, WITI reported.
