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A Florida mom accused of leaving her four kids home alone to go on a work trip to Las Vegas refused to fly home even when cops called her to say her youngest child had been taken to the hospital, police said.
Irene Miller, 50, was arrested at Orlando International Airport on Friday on charges of child neglect after allegedly leaving her kids, aged 9, 11, 12, and 14, home alone at her Kissimmee condo, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
Officers informed Miller last Wednesday that her 9-year-old son had been rushed to the hospital with a head laceration after his older sister called 911 to report that a dumbbell had fallen on him, police said.
Miller, a Russian-born photographer, said she was in Vegas until Friday and “couldn’t come home,” Capt. Kim Montes, of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, told the Daily Mail.
Authorities then contacted the children’s father, Mark Miller, 53, who didn’t know his estranged wife had left them unsupervised, she said.
The “ecstatic” kids were placed in their father’s care, Montes added.
Mark Miller was charged with criminal battery against wife Irene earlier this year.
The dumbell accident happened as the four children were trying to make a blanket fort, using the dumbbell to secure it, an unidentified family friend told the Daily Mail.
There was “a lot of blood,” the friend added, describing the situation as “chaotic,” for Mark, who has no contact with his wife.
The couple has been in the process of getting a divorce after 15 years of marriage.
They were cohabiting in the Kissimmee condo until August, when Miller accused her husband of abuse, an allegation he denies, the captain said.
Mark was taken into custody on Aug. 21 after he allegedly struck his wife outside their children’s school, according to a charging affidavit.
He was subsequently arrested, charged, and released on a $10,000 bond, court records showed.
A judge issued a no-contact order after the assault allegation on Sept. 4, but the Department of Children and Family Services determined that Mark was safe to take his children, Montes said.
All four kids are now living with their father in a single-room motel after he became their “unexpected sole caregiver,” Mark revealed in a GoFundMe seeking $5,000 to support his children.
The Ukrainian-born dad of four is “doing everything I can to keep my children safe and together,” he wrote, adding that he doesn’t believe his estranged wife is “a bad person,” but rather, “made choices she didn’t fully think through.”
Miller is still living in the family’s condo after she filed a dissolution of marriage petition in Osceola County on Sept. 17, court records showed.
