Belizaire declined to give a statement and invoked her right to remain silent, the report states.
A Florida mother of four came home to handcuffs after police said she left her children, including a 2-month-old baby, home alone while taking a three-day Carnival cruise to the Bahamas.
Nathalie Belizaire, 29, faces four counts of child neglect after law enforcement said her children were found without adult supervision inside their North Miami Beach apartment on Sept. 26.
According to an arrest report, the father of Belizaire’s 2-month-old child saw what appeared to be a Carnival Cruise Line ticket on Belizaire’s social media days earlier. When he spoke with Belizaire, she told him she planned to leave the children with their great-grandmother while she was away.
The father later went to the apartment, saw the television on through the blinds and heard the children talking inside, the report states. He called 911.
North Miami Beach police and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue responded. Firefighters forced their way into the apartment over concerns for the children’s welfare and found all four hiding together in a bathroom, according to the report. The children included a 2-month-old and a 2-year-old.
Investigators contacted the children’s great-grandmother, who said Belizaire had told her she would drop off the children because she was going out of town. However, the great-grandmother said Belizaire never brought them to her home. Belizaire’s brother told law enforcement he also received a text message asking him to check on the children.
On Monday, Sept. 28, North Miami Beach police and a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office detective went to the Port of Miami, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection took Belizaire into custody after she disembarked from the Carnival Conquest. She was then turned over to North Miami Beach police.
Belizaire declined to give a statement and invoked her right to remain silent, the report states. She was being held on a $10,000 bond.
On Tuesday, Belizaire’s public defender filed a written plea of not guilty in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
