GLENPOOL, Okla. — An Oklahoma couple has been charged with child neglect after police say they left their three young children home alone while they played pickleball roughly 20 minutes away, and that investigators later found the children had been left unsupervised on prior occasions as well.
What police say happened
Andrew Dick and Feather Roberts were taken into custody Aug. 30 after Glenpool police responded to a 911 hang-up call that raised concerns for the welfare of children at their home, according to the Glenpool Police Department. A person contacted the couple after the hang-up call; Dick and Roberts said their children were with a babysitter while they played pickleball at Courts and Commons in Bixby, roughly 11 miles from their Glenpool home. When that person went to check the house directly, they found the children alone, police said.
Responding officers found an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old watching television, with a 1-year-old asleep. When the parents returned, they told officers they had in fact been playing pickleball at the time. Asked how the children would reach them in an emergency, police said Roberts told them the kids had access to an iPad they could use to call. A fourth child, an infant, was separately with a babysitter at another location at the time, investigators said.
A pattern, investigators say
During the investigation, officers said they developed information indicating the children had been left without adult supervision before. Dick and Roberts were each charged with three counts of child neglect — one per child found alone in the home.
Child neglect charges generally apply when a parent or caregiver fails to provide necessary supervision, care or protection, particularly where that failure places a child at risk of harm; prosecutors do not need to prove a child was actually injured, only that required supervision was absent.
Both Dick and Roberts have been charged but not convicted, and are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court. Further details on their court proceedings were not immediately available.
Source: Glenpool Police Department, Daily Mail.
