When police were called to reports of a 4-year-old child wandering a Florida apartment complex alone at 2:30 in the morning they had a difficult time finding and then waking his mother. And when she was alert, they report she didn’t seem to be taking their discovery very seriously – they say she was laughing.
Elena Chikaurova “seemed to think the incident was funny,” Boynton Beach police wrote in a report that landed Chikaurova and her boyfriend, Pavel Krutakov, in jail Monday facing charges of child neglect. By Monday afternoon both had been released on bond.
A caller tipped police to the child.
That caller said the boy was roaming the complex looking for his parents. When the caller asked the boy where he lived, the child led the person to an apartment. The apartment door was unlocked, but no one appeared to be inside, according to the police accounts. As the child and adult stood there, the unnamed adult said a man later identified as Krutakov walked up, grabbed the child, put the boy inside the apartment and left again.
The two Boynton Beach officers then arrived at the apartment complex and knocked on the door. They said the boy answered the door as Krutakov arrived to say he lived there. They went inside and found Chikaurova passed out inside. Police said she smelled of alcohol. A half-empty and open bottle of vodka was in the home as was some marijuana and a pipe.
Krutakov said he’d been out fishing. Chikaurova said she was sleeping and didn’t know Krutakov was gone.
“Elena was laughing as she spoke about the incident and did not seem to think it was a big deal (that the boy) had wandered outside the residence and out into the street at 2:30 in the morning,” police wrote in her arrest report. “I asked her about the door locks and she said this hasn’t happened before and again seemed to think the incident was funny.”
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