Mom charged after boys 4 and 5 walk through the dark to Warren pharmacy

Staff report

WARREN

Employees at a Parkman Road Northwest pharmacy contacted police Thursday evening after realizing that boys age 4 and 5 had been playing in the store aisles without adult supervision, leading to two child-endangering charges against their mother.

The children live several streets away, and police estimate it took them 20 minutes to walk there in the dark from their home on Robert Avenue Northwest. The distance is about two-thirds of a mile.

Their walk apparently had taken them on dark side streets and on heavily traveled Parkman Road, police said in the report.

The temperature outside was 31 degrees. The report doesn’t say whether they were wearing coats.

Rebecca Rice, 24, of Robert Avenue, pleaded not guilty Friday in Warren Municipal Court and is being held in the Trumbull County jail without eligibility to make bond.

The boys were taken into custody by Trumbull County Children Services.

Employees at Rite Aid, 1560 Parkman Road, said they saw the boys about 6:15 p.m. but thought they were with an adult in another part of the store. They realized about 6:36 p.m. that they were alone.

The boys said they had “walked there to buy things by themselves,” a police report says.

Police went to an address for their mother on Robert and found a door open.

Rice told police she had been sleeping.

Police discovered that a male in the apartment had fled through a bedroom window when police arrived.