Mother And Grandmother Arrested After Toddlers Found Alone In The Cold

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The mother and grandmother of two toddlers were charged with endangerment. The toddlers were found near a busy East Street in Bloomsburg last month.

Elizabeth Rhone, 24, and her mother Jeanne Benjamin, 56, of Bloomsburg were arrested.

Police say that a two-year-old and a three-year-old were found wandering near the roadway by a passer-by. The children were wearing pajamas and had no shoes on their feet.

The woman who found them, grabbed the kids before they wandered into the busy roadway. She then them in her vehicle and wrapped them in blankets.

Bloomsburg Police Sergeant Charles Balon described the children as having “Red blotchy skin, cold to the touch, crying, filled diapers, dirty, caked on paint and dirt and just hadn’t been bathed in some time,”

The two-year-old is Rhone’s son and the three- year-old is her niece.

The children reportedly took off from the home on East Third Street in Bloomsburg where Rhone and Benjamin live together. Benjamin’s other adult daughter and a baby also live in the home.

Rhone and Benjamin apparently noticed the toddlers were gone, but never called the police.

Benjamin told police “I am not half a dozen people, the children go upstairs and hang out the bedroom window, they take their clothes off and climb out the window.”

When asked why she didn’t call the police, Rhone responded by saying “I didn’t think of it.”

Police say the two seemed to find the situation funny.

“Difficult to wrap my mind around why this was comical almost to them,” said Sergeant Balon.