A mother is facing child neglect charges after her three children were found alone in a tractor trailer at a truck stop in northern Palm Beach County with a loaded gun inside, police said.
Someone from the truck stop in Riviera Beach called police shortly after 1:30 p.m. Monday to report that a truck had been sitting in front of a gas pump for three hours without moving, the police department said in a news release Tuesday.
A 16-year-old boy sitting in the passenger’s seat rolled down the truck window and told officers who arrived his age and that he couldn’t move the truck. An officer saw a 5-year-old girl walking around the cab of the truck, then sit in the driver’s seat, the news release said.
Both children voluntarily got out of the truck and told the officers their 1-year-old baby sister was also inside. An officer took the baby from the truck and saw a Glock Model 26 9mm pistol on the floor between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, the news release said. The loaded gun was not in a holster, police said.
An unholstered, loaded Glock Model 26 9mm
semi-automatic pistol was found inside the truck on the floor between the driver’s and
passenger’s seats, police said. (Riviera Beach Police/Courtesy)
Officers at some point later found their mother, TorQuita Tashe Griffin, 36, of Jacksonville, and the truck driver, 26, who was not identified in the news release. Griffin told police she owned the gun in the truck and that she had left her children alone for an hour to buy food.
Griffin was booked into the Palm Beach County jail Monday night and has since been released after posting bail. She is facing three counts of unsafe storage of firearm or weapons, three counts of abuse or neglect of a child and received citations for leaving a child unattended in a vehicle for more than 15 minutes, court records show.
The Florida Department of Children and Families are investigating, the police department said.
