Support is building this morning for a woman who left her baby strapped to a shopping cart in a parking lot.
Cherish
Peterson, a mother of four young kids, said she was horrified to
realize she drove off from a grocery store in Arizona last week without
her two-month-old son and since then, there's been a roller coaster
reaction on social media, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano.
The incident happened in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, on a day when the high temperature was 104 degrees.
Peterson after spending time on the internet
returned to the grocery store to look for her baby after about 40
minutes, but she didn't notice he was missing until she had finished her
errands and driven all the way home.
"As I was pulling
into the garage, my 3-year-old-goes, 'Where is baby Huxton?' I turned
around and looked and realized he was gone," Peterson said.
She told CBS Phoenix Affiliate KPHO she was distracted by two of her kids and forgot her son, who was still in the cart.
"Normally,
I put my cart away, but I didn't need to because I parked at the front
of the store, and I never park there. And I drove away," Peterson said.
An off-duty police officer found the infant and took him inside a nearby Supercuts.
Huxton was checked out at a hospital before being returned to his parents.
"I'm a good mom who made a horrible mistake," she said.
Police
believed it was an accident, but the internet was not as forgiving.
People questioned the 28-year-old mom's parenting skills and wondered if
alcohol or drugs were involved.
There were also comparisons to the treatment of Shanesha Taylor,
an unemployed Phoenix mother who in May was sentenced to 18 years
probation for leaving her two sons inside her SUV during a job
interview.
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