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Sugar Cookie

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Police were called Thursday morning to an apartment building after it was noticed that two very young children were left home alone in their apartment.

After the children’s mother was arrested, there were multiple stories about whose responsibility the infant and toddler were.

New Haven police says a housing inspector and property manager were inside the apartment building and noticed the children by themselves.

Chantell Hamilton, 28, who told police she left the kids home while she ran an errand to court, was charged with two counts of risk of injury. Her three year old daughter and four month old son were placed in the temporary custody of the Department of Children and Families.

“Then, she’s got a four-year-old, who they’re going to get from school,” said Bernadette Belton, the grandmother of one of Hamilton‘s five children. “So, she has three that is going to be in DCF custody.”

Belton says it’s actually the father of the four-month-old, who should’ve been arrested.

“He (Nathan Lewis) was the last one in the house and he left,” Belton said.

She claims Lewis locked one of the kids in the bathroom, but police have not confirmed that yet.

“I didn’t do that,” Lewis said. “I wasn’t even home.”

He wouldn’t answer whether police have been trying to find him. And didn’t believe the kids were placed in DCF custody. He grew disgusted when told that the children were already in custody.

“Yo! Get these (cameras) out of my face cuz,” Lewis said.
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Jun 14, 2019
Chantell Hamilton left her West River apartment to walk her 4-year-old daughter a block away to a school bus stop.

She returned a half hour later to find cops waiting to arrest her for allegedly leaving her 3-year-old daughter and 4-month-old son alone at home. Marched out in handcuffs in front of a wall of TV news cameras, she was subsequently slapped with a $25,000 bail bond and sent to lock-up until a neighbor bailed her out.

Hamilton, 28, told her side of what happened before, during, and after her June 6 arrest in an interview with the Independent. She said she was glad, after her public shaming, to have a chance to speak for herself.

“It felt disgusting,” Hamilton said in tears as she recalled the humiliation of having her name and face plastered over the Internet after her arrest. “I cried when I got out. I stayed in the house for three days. Didn’t eat. Didn’t do nothing.”

Alerted by a housing authority inspector to the presence of unattended children in her apartment, police arrested Hamilton and charged her with two felony counts of risk of injury to a child.

Hamilton’s pending arrest made it over the police radio. A WFSB crew arrived on the scene in time to record officers leading Hamilton in handcuffs and with a sweatshirt over her head out of her apartment building and into the back of a police van.

Later that day, the police department’s spokesperson sent out a press release publicizing the arrest, the charges, the $25,000 bail amount, the Department of Children and Families (DCF) taking of custody of Hamilton’s three kids, and her mugshot. Nearly every local news outlet then ran with that picture. Meanwhile, Hamilton remained behind bars on Union Avenue, even though she has no criminal record.

James, a friend of Hamilton said he drove down to 1 Union Ave. later that day and paid a bail bondsman $1,200 in cash to free his neighbor the day before her arraignment. “I had it, and they didn’t,” he said about why he paid his friend’s bond. He said he knew that Hamilton and her husband are good people, that she didn’t have a record, and felt compelled to help out a friend in need.

Hamilton said DCF has told her and her husband Nate Lewis that they have to attend therapy and domestic violence counseling in order to regain custody of their three children in six months.

According to an incident report written by Officer Rykema Stone.

Upon arrival, the officers met a maintenance worker at the building; the local housing authority Section 8 rental subsidy program inspector who had called in the initial complaint; and Hamilton. They were all standing outside the building on the front sidewalk with Hamilton’s two young children.

The housing authority inspector, Ahmadi Aimal, told the officers that he was on site to conduct a routine inspection of Hamilton’s apartment.

“He stated as he knocked on the door” of her unit, the police report reads, “he heard a small child’s voice, but no one answered the door.” After three minutes and several knocks, he asked the building’s maintenance worker, Carlos Mercado, to open the door to the apartment.

When he got into the apartment, the inspector said, he found “a black belt that was connected to the outside door knob of the child’s bedroom and the outside door knob of the bathroom. He stated there was a small crack that allowed him to see there was a child trapped inside the bedroom and the belt was preventing the child from being able to exit the bedroom. He stated he also noticed there was an infant sleeping in a crib inside the mother’s bedroom.”

The inspector said he called Hamilton, who said, “I’m at court.” Then he called the police.

The maintenance worker said he had seen Hamilton leave the house at around 8:20 to walk her 4-year-old child to the bus stop at George Street and Sherman Avenue, just a block away from her apartment. He said she was gone for about 25 to 35 minutes.

When the officers spoke with Hamilton, according to the report, she said she had left her children home with their father, Nate Lewis.

In person on Thursday, Hamilton said she had actually left her children at home with her husband’s friend, who she said left the apartment before she returned. That friend, she said, was the one responsible for locking her 3-year-old in her bedroom. The police report, however, notes that the arresting officers overheard Hamilton admitting to sometimes locking her child in her bedroom to keep her from “going through the refrigerator or opening the front door.”

The arresting officers then called DCF, who sent a social worker and a case worker to the scene. The DCF staffers said they were familiar with “prior cases” involving Hamilton and her family, and said they would be taking Hamlton’s children into temporary custody.

In her interview with the Independent, Hamilton told a story largely similar to what’s outlined in the police report.

She insisted she is not the one responsible for locking her child in the bedroom.

She that she was not far from home the morning the inspector found her kids alone in the apartment.

“I was just walking my kid to the bus,” she said. “I didn’t have to go to court. I didn’t have to do none of that.”

She said she and Lewis take good care of their children, showing off pantries full of groceries and a bedroom shelf stacked with diapers in the apartment.

With no prior criminal history, she said, she was shocked to be given a $25,000 bail amount and sent immediately to lock up.
As someone who suffers from asthma and seizures, she said, spending just a few hours in lock-up was a harrowing experience. “I still wake up with nightmares,” she said.
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Mom Shamed, Locked Up, Shaken
 
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Lying piece of crap. First she left him with the infants father who later she calls her “husband”, then a friend of baby daddy/husband. Bus stop is a block away yet she’s gone for over half an hour. At court later not at court...blah blah.

And glad your house was well stocked and picture ready for your photo shoot, but that doesn’t mean Dick.

If you’re such a wonderful parent where are your other two kids? Article says you have five.

Ps. Don’t know why I switched pronouns midway so it sounds like I’m writing to her and expecting her to reply, but too lazy to fix it.
 
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