For over an hour, a Florida mother went out to a nightclub while her toddler napped on the sidewalk and her two other children were home alone.
Shyla Heidelberg, 25, was arrested on Saturday after one of her children, a 3-year-old, was discovered unattended at 1 a.m. According to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, the baby was sleeping on a sidewalk outside an apartment complex in Fort Walton Beach while wrapped in a blanket.
According to WKRG, responding deputies discovered the 3-year-two old’s other siblings asleep inside a unit at the Choctaw Village Apartments, where a security guard had first spotted him outside. As soon as she got home, Heidelberg told deputies she had “gone out to a nightclub” about 90 minutes earlier and had left her kids alone.
Three counts of child neglect without great bodily harm were filed against Heidelberg. Jail records show that she was released from custody on Sunday. When contacted for comment early Monday, she denied the accusations.
“It wasn’t true,” she told The Post during a brief interview. “I have proof that I wasn’t in the club.”
Her Ring doorbell camera, as well as a few witnesses, will back up her claims that she didn’t leave her children while she went to the club.
“A couple of people can state that I wasn’t there,” Heidelberg insisted before hanging up the phone call.