Left: Apartment building in the 600 block of N. Grand Boulevard in St. Louis, Mo. (Google Maps). Right: Desiree Ching (St. Louis Justice Center).
Two parents in Missouri allegedly left two young children alone "for hours" inside a 14th-floor apartment with a broken window where they could have plunged to their deaths.
Desiree Ching, 32, and David Croft, 39, are each facing two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Officers from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department responded on July 13 for a welfare check at an apartment building in the 600 block of N. Grand Boulevard.
Witnesses said they saw one of the children hanging from the open window.
Cops went inside the apartment after knocking on the door but receiving no response. They saw a bedroom door that was locked from the outside to ensure no one could escape.
Inside the room, cops found two kids ages 5 and 3 who were "completely naked and alone."
"The walls of the room are covered in feces and there is a broken window which exposed the children to a 14-foot drop," cops wrote.
Officers determined it was "clear" that the kids were locked in the room for "at least several hours." The children were taken to the hospital for treatment. Ching arrived at the hospital and identified herself as the mother of the children. The affidavit does not say where Ching went after leaving the apartment.
She was arrested and taken to the St. Louis Justice Center, where she remains without bond.
Croft told cops he was the father when he arrived at the apartment. He was arrested but later released on his own recognizance after it was revealed that he left the kids in the custody of Ching when he went to work in the morning.
Cops did not say what happened to the kids after they were taken to the hospital.
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