Clover police: Witness description helped nab mom who left son in car at store

A North Carolina mother was charged with child neglect after she left her 3-year-old son alone in the car while she went into a Clover store, according to police.

Sara Ruth West, 23, of Hartford Road in Gastonia, N.C., was charged with unlawful neglect of a child, according to a Clover police report. She was placed in the York County Detention Center and released Thursday.

A shopper at the BI-LO on South Main Street in Clover called police around 4:45 p.m. Wednesday to report that a child was alone in a vehicle with the windows up and the car not running, police said. The shopper said the sleeping boy was red and sweating.

The boy’s mother was exiting the store as the witness walked in, and when she told the mother she had contacted police, the mother got in the car and left, the report states. The witness gave officers a description of the vehicle and the stickers on the car.

A detective got behind the car on U.S. 321 and stopped it on McConnell Street, police said. When asked about leaving her child in the car at the store, the mother, West, said she left the child in the car “for about” five minutes while she went inside to get formula for her other child.

West said her son “is grumpy and pitches a fit” when he is woken up, and she didn’t want to wake the boy for the short period of time she would be in the store, the report states.

West was arrested.

The Department of Social Services was contacted and the boy was turned over to his grandfather, police said.

This story was originally published June 16, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Clover police: Witness description helped nab mom who left son in car at store."