3 city women face charges in Va.

Five children were taken immediately from the women by a social services agency.

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — Three city women have been charged with felony child endangering in Virginia after police said they found five children in the back of the women’s hot, windowless moving van.

The women are also facing drug charges. Mary E. Clark, 31, Tamara Sharpe, 31, and Misty R. Jewell, 31, were in the New River Regional Jail in Pulaski County, Va. Wednesday night.

They were arrested at noon Tuesday near a welcome area on Interstate 77 just over the West Virginia state line, Virginia state police said.

People at the rest stop were concerned when the saw the children going in and out of the back of the van and reported the women to police. A trooper stopped the van on the interstate not far from the rest stop, police said.

The women told police that they didn’t have any other way to transport the children, all theirs, during their move to Georgia.

Police reported that as the trooper approached the cab of the van, he could smell marijuana smoke. When he opened the back of the van, he found the kids, one 11, one 12, one 13 and two 4-year-olds in heat that was “well over 100 degrees,” police said.

The children were sweaty but otherwise unhurt. They were turned over immediately to the county’s children services agency, police said.

The women are facing the felony charges according to how many of the children are theirs: Clark is facing one felony count along plus a count of misdemeanor drug possession; Sharpe faces three felony counts plus one count of possession; and Jewell, who was driving the van, faces one felony count plus one count of possession, one count of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, one count of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and one count of possession of the drug ecstasy. Police reported finding 43 grams of cocaine and 30 grams of marijuana with the women.

Police said the truck cab was air-conditioned, and that one of the women asked a trooper if she could sit in his car while they talked because it was air-conditioned.