ALOHA, OR (KPTV) -
An Aloha mother has been arrested twice within two days after her daughter, age 2, was found wandering a busy street alone, wearing nothing but a diaper.
"All I could do is think, ‘I gotta get this girl safe; gotta keep her safe,'" said Walter Bates, the good Samaritan who found the toddler Wednesday morning.
Bates told Fox 12 he was biking to work along Southwest 185th Avenue when he saw the girl walking out of a driveway and toward the busy road.
"I expected to see a parent coming out of the driveway chasing her and nothing happened," said Bates. "Then she started to turn toward the street itself and stepped off the curb. That's when I sprinted as fast as I could on my bicycle and cut her off, so she couldn't go any farther into the street."
Bates called 911 and walked with the girl to a nearby apartment complex to look for her mother. Meanwhile, a neighbor found the child some clothes before deputies arrived.
"The baby was really cold; she was really freezing," said Daisy Rojas, who lives in the same complex. "Four cops came and tried to look for the mom… mom was nowhere to be found."
Eventually the toddler's mother was found at her apartment and arrested, according to deputies. The Washington County Sheriff's Office says Alexandra Watkins, 23, had been released from jail just 11 hours earlier after being booked on the same charges of child neglect.
On Monday, a TriMet driver called law enforcement after spotting the girl walking alone down the sidewalk of Southwest 185th near Johnson Street, according to a sheriff's spokesman.
Watkins was booked at Washington County Jail and now faces two charges of misdemeanor child neglect in the second degree.
A sheriff's spokesman said DHS has been notified, and the child was placed with a family member.
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