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Jun 29, 2009 9:26 pm US/Central
Watauga Mom Talks About Leaving Baby In Car
WATAUGA (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Jessica Liston was arrested for leaving her baby in a locked car, in triple-digit heat, while she shopped at Wal-Mart. Now, the North Texas parent is speaking out to CBS 11 News, hoping it will help other parents avoid the same mistake.
"They're my babies," Liston said. "I just want my babies."
Liston now sits in her Watauga home, surrounded by her kids' toys, but not knowing when she will again live with her 3-year-old son, Matthew, and her 2-month-old daughter, Elizabeth. "My kids are everything to me," she said. "I've never been away from them. And this isn't my home without them."
The two children were sent to live with Liston's aunt last week, after the 21-year-old mom was arrested for suspicion of injury to a child. It happened after she left her baby daughter in a locked car while she went shopping inside a Wal-Mart store in north Fort Worth.
Liston told CBS 11 News that her mother had gone into the store before her, and she thought that baby Elizabeth was already inside.
"When I figured out that she didn't have her, I ran outside," said Liston. "And by the time I got out there, somebody had already gotten her."
Luckily, a Good Samaritan saw Elizabeth in the backseat and broke into the car with a crowbar to rescue the baby. "I just want to hug him," Liston said of the man who saved her baby. "I can't thank him enough."
"How could you not know that your baby was in the backseat? Makes me sound so hypocritical, because I've said that," Liston told CBS 11 News. "But it happens. It does happen."
"There's no way to excuse leaving a baby in a car on a 100-degree day," admitted Trey Lofton, the lawyer representing Liston. "All we can do is apologize for everything."
Lofton said that Liston recently separated from her husband and was diagnosed with severe postpartum depression. The medicine that she had been taken, Lofton said, left Liston tired and confused. "That's the perfect storm that led to Wal-Mart," Lofton said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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