EASTON, MASS. (WHDH) - A Maine mother accused of leaving her 17-month-old son in a shopping cart outside a Target in Easton over the weekend has been charged with abandonment/endangerment of a child.
Officers responding to the Robert Drive shopping center around 1 p.m. found the baby boy who had been left in a shopping cart with the customer who found him, according to Easton police.
The child, which appeared unharmed, was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital to be evaluated.
During an investigation into the abandoned toddler, Easton police received a call around 2 p.m. from a man reporting that the child had been left behind in the parking lot accidentally, police said.
The caller added that he was with the child’s mother, 27-year-old Taylor Perdue from Acton, Maine, in Plymouth and they would head back to Easton.
Perdue told detectives that after leaving Target she returned to her car, along with three friends, and believed that one of her friends had secured her son in his rear-facing car seat, police said.
She also told police that she traveled to Plymouth in her car while her friends left in a separate car and realized her son wasn’t in the car seat when she arrived at their destination.
Easton Police notified the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, which launched its own investigation.
In coordination with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, DCF granted custody of the child to the mother later that evening.
Perdue is expected to be arraigned in Taunton District Court on a later date.
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