Background: A Sylvan Learning Center in Brookfield, Wisc. (Google Maps). Inset: Flor Escalante (Waukesha County Sheriff's Department).
A Wisconsin mother who kicked her son out of the car after an argument about his grades and forced him to walk along a busy highway by himself entered a guilty plea.
Flor Escalante, 44, was charged with abandonment of a child and child neglect after an incident one year ago involving her son, who was 12 years old at the time. According to court records, Escalante pleaded guilty on Thursday to the abandonment charge, and the judge dismissed the neglect charge. She was sentenced to two years probation.
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As Law&Crime previously reported, Escalante was driving her son to a Sylvan Learning Center in Brookfield on Nov. 8, 2024. The mother and son got into an argument about his grades before she pulled her vehicle over to the side of the I-94 highway and told the boy to get out and walk the rest of the way. The boy had been dropped off about two miles from the learning center while the air temperature was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit — weather he was not dressed for at the time.
Traffic was also heavy while the boy was steps away from the interstate highway, where vehicles can hit speeds around 70 miles per hour. Several drivers called 911 to report sightings of "a 10- or 12-year-old on the shoulder crying" who "doesn't know his mom or dad's name." Police finally got to the boy and brought him to the learning center where Escalante was waiting.
Escalante told police that her son "didn't appreciate everything [she] did for him," and that she made him walk the final two miles "so he can understand what labor is." She said she turned her car around to retrieve her son, but she could not find him, so she went to the learning center to meet him there. Escalante said she "just assumed that officers would bring him back to her."
