Mother Charged After 2 Children Found Alone Near Busy Road

A mother is charged with child neglect after police said her two young children were found alone near a busy road.

“Anybody could have taken those two precious little babies,” Debra Campbell, who spotted the children, said.

Campbell said she was driving a church van full of children back from a field trip when she saw a 3-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy alone along Clanton Road, which is near West Boulevard.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God. Who, why … who, why, where are those babies ... How can they be out here unattended like that?’” Campbell said.

Campbell said she turned the van around to get back to the children. By that time, she said, one of them ran straight toward traffic.

“As I'm turning and I see her running, I'm saying, ‘No, stop, stop.’ I'm yelling out the window, ‘Stop, stop, stop,’” she said.

Once Campbell got the children out of harm’s way, she called police. They located Natasha Gilliam, the children’s mother, and charged her with two counts of child neglect.

Campbell said she shudders to think what could have happened to the two children.

“They could have literally been on the side of a milk carton today, instead of safe if the wrong person had come by,” she said.

Police haven't said where Gilliam was or how the children got near the road.

The Department of Social Services has removed the children from Gilliam’s care, at least temporarily, and placed them with a relative.