SHREWSBURY, Mo. — Three Shrewsbury police officers received commendations from the city's police chief for staying with a 6-year-old girl who was found by herself with no shirt or shoes in late February.
Sgt. Tomey Foltz, Cpl. Brian Koenig and Officer Brian Tran received the Chief's Commendation Award on Tuesday during a board of aldermen meeting for their "commitment and dedication to protecting and serving the citizens of ... Shrewsbury."
The officers responded on Feb. 21 to an apartment complex in the 7100 block of Weil Avenue, near the city's border with St. Louis, to check on the girl's welfare. When they arrived, they found the girl sitting with the person who initially called police. The person found the girl walking by herself and didn't know the girl or where she lived.
The girl told the officers that her mother had left, and she did not know where she went. After the officers and Shrewsbury Fire Department paramedics calmed the crying and scared girl, she was able to show the officers the apartment where she and her mother lived.
The officers knocked on the apartment door to the apartment and found it was unlocked. A large front window was also broken.
When no one answered the door, the officers went inside the apartment where they saw a loaded gun on a bedside table, and found methamphetamine and a glass pipe used to smoke it. A children's television show was playing on a set in the bedroom.
Unable to find any neighbors who knew the girl and her mother, the officers started calling numbers on a cellphone in the apartment. They finally reached the girl's grandmother.
About 45 minutes after the officers first arrived at the apartment, the girl's mother returned home. She told the officers she had been on the back porch.
The officers responded that they had searched the apartment complex and did not see her. The girl's mother was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment and outstanding warrants for failure to appear on charges of drug possession in Jefferson County, Missouri.
A subsequent Missouri Department of Social Services investigation found the girl had methamphetamine and amphetamine in her system.
The girl's 30-year-old mother was indicted in March by a St. Louis County grand jury on a felony charge of endangering the welfare of a child. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced in June to two years in prison and three years of probation.
5 On Your Side is not naming the woman to protect the girl's identity.
