Crete father acquitted after toddler goes on late-night walkabout
A court in Iraklio, Crete, on Tuesday acquitted a man of charges of childhood neglect and endangerment after his 2-year-old daughter was found wandering in the street in the middle of the night.
According to local media, the toddler appears to have climbed out of her crib and wandered out of the family home, in the area of Hersonissos, late on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday, and was found by a man returning from work at a nearby taverna. The man took the child to the local police station, where she was looked after until officers could track down her parents.
The charges were dropped against the child’s father, who returned home after 2 a.m. on Saturday morning from a different part of Iraklio, where he had been attending to the affairs of his recently deceased grandmother. After being reminded by judges of the perils that could have befallen the young child, he assured the court that he was in the process of installing barriers and an alarm system at the family home to prevent such an incident from occurring again.
The child’s mother, who said she put the baby to bed and then turned in herself at around 11 p.m. on Friday night, is to stand trial separately.
