Florida mom Allison Daugherty is arrested after abandoning toddler in running car so she could go swimming with sharks
Florida mom Allison Daugherty is arrested after leaving toddler in a running car so she could swim with sharks
- Allison Daugherty, 41, was charged with child neglect
- She left a two-year-old boy in a vehicle with the air conditioning running while she swam
- Daugherty, who appears to have serious mental health issues, told bystanders she wanted to ‘meet sharks’
A Florida woman has been arrested for child neglect after leaving a toddler in a running car while she left to swim in the ocean and “meet sharks.”
Officers from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office were called to Capt’n Con’s Fish House, a waterfront restaurant in Bokeelia, near Cape Coral, around 10:27 a.m. Monday.
Allison Sarah Daugherty, 41, had parked near the pier and turned up the radio before jumping into the water, leaving the child alone in the vehicle with the air conditioning still on.
People shouted at her and warned her about the presence of fishing hooks and sharks.
Allison Sarah Daugherty, 41, was arrested Monday after leaving a two-year-old toddler in a moving vehicle to go swimming with sharks
Daugherty, 41, is shown grinning in her mug shot Monday after being charged with child neglect
She shouted that she didn’t care, wanted to “get addicted” and “meet sharks.”
Twenty minutes later, passersby saw the child crawling around in the car in a diaper.
After emergency services arrived, Daugherty began swimming further from shore. A Boca Grande Marine Unit eventually brought her to shore.
Police CCTV footage showed her treading water and then being walked to a nearby police vehicle in her black bikini.
Daugherty was listed on the arrest record as “transient,” meaning she did not have a physical home and address at the time.
According to the staff, she had been to the restaurant three times in the past week.
Daugherty is shown swimming towards a police boat after trying to evade arrest on Monday
Daugherty in a photo on social media. She has previously been accused of failing to pay child support
Staff member Jenny Wray shared NBC2: “We called the sheriff’s office; she didn’t seem drunk. She didn’t seem drunk. Something wasn’t right.’
After Daugherty’s arrest, staff gave the boy lunch while they waited for a family member to pick him up.
Wray described him as “sweet” and “very well-behaved.”
“He was eating and watching TV like he was oblivious to what was going on, thank God,” she said.
Daugherty is a mother of two children. Police have not yet confirmed whether the child in the car was her own child
“If it was me and that was the situation, I would want someone to take my baby and make sure he was safe.”
Daugherty was arrested at the Lee County Jail, charged with child neglect for “leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle for more than 15 minutes.”
It wasn’t her first run-in with the law, as Daugherty had disputes in the past over unpaid insurance and child support.
In the weeks leading up to her arrest, a series of increasingly disjointed Facebook posts were posted.
The mother of two went from beaming with her kids on Christmas and Halloween to sharing photos of nebulae, meteors and strange weather phenomena.
On August 1, the mother of two posted a photo of a handwritten letter that read: “My face is that of a stranger. No, it’s the stranger who stole my face. Who was or is it? Where is it? Most importantly: why?!”
She made her last post on August 29 before going silent.
It read in part: “ME ME ME ME ME ME THANK YOU JESUS JESHUA IS THE ONE TRUE GOD EVERY KNEE WILL BOW ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. HE WILL SEPARATE THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS, YOU CHOOSE.”
The pier where Daugherty went swimming Monday and left her toddler in a car