Mom left her 6-year-old son in car while she shopped in Macon Walmart, cops say
A 6-year-old boy was found alone and crying in a car in the parking lot of an east Macon Walmart on Saturday after his mother left him there to go shopping, police said.
Bibb County sheriff’s deputies called to the store on Gray Highway about a child abandonment were flagged down by bystanders at a 2008 Ford Taurus.
The boy was taken out of the car by one of the deputies.
The bystanders, according to a sheriff’s report, said the child had “been inside the vehicle by himself crying for a long period of time.”
Surveillance footage of the parking later showed that the boy had been in the car for about 30 minutes, the report noted.
When the child’s mother emerged from the store, she “came nonchalantly toward” the car, the sheriff’s write-up said.
The mother, Chimequea Rena Johnson, 28, of Macon, was asked by one of the deputies “why she left the child in the car alone,” the report said. “She uttered the words that he wanted to stay in the vehicle.”
The child, who didn’t appear to have been hurt, was picked up by a godmother.
Johnson was jailed on a charge of first-degree child cruelty and later released on $8,450 bond.
This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 3:25 PM.