Toddler Left Alone On West Des Moines Balcony, Police Say

WEST DES MOINES, IA — A West Des Moines couple were referred to the Iowa Department of Human Services after allegedly leaving their 3-year-old son home alone on a second-story balcony of their apartment complex.

Authorities were sent Nov. 30 to an apartment in the 6100 block of Vista Drive after neighbors reported that 33-year-old man was laying on the pavement behind his wife’s SUV in an attempt to prevent her from leaving, according to a report on file at the West Des Moines Police Department.

The two had been arguing, a witness told police, and began slapping each other before the husband lay down behind the SUV. The wife, age 28, eventually was able to leave, but her husband reportedly clung to the bumper of the vehicle as she drove away.

Police later located him walking along Vista Drive, about a mile from the apartment complex. He reportedly admitted to Heintz that leaving the 3-year-old home alone was “a bad decision he made in the heat of the moment during the fight.”

When his wife returned to the scene, she reportedly told police that "she had no idea her husband would leave the toddler alone in the apartment and she was not responsible because she had left for her dinner date right after the argument.”

Heintz characterized the mother’s demeanor as “very rude and uncooperative” and wrote that she “kept laughing and sneering, as if we were wasting her time.” According to the report, she had been arrested in 2007 for a similar incident involving the couple’s now 9-year-old child.

Police said in the current case, the 3-year-old had been left alone for about 20 minutes “and possibly spent that entire time on the balcony in the cold weather.”

The husband was taken to the Dallas County Jail on child endangerment charges, while the wife was allowed to stay with the children.

But she was told to begin cleaning up the apartment, which had rotting food, garbage and a small path used to walk from one room to another, according to the report.