Tots Left In Hot Car While Mom Mall Shopped: Deputies

WESLEY CHAPEL, FL — A 29-year-old stay-at-home mom from Tampa faces two counts of child neglect after a Pasco County Sheriff’s deputy says she left her children locked in her car while she shopped at Wiregrass Mall Thursday evening.

According to the sheriff’s office, a deputy was called to the Paseo Drive mall about a child locked in a car. When the deputy arrived, he learned from mall security that Heba Basta had left her children, ages 1 and 2, inside her car with the windows rolled up after 5:20 p.m. on July 13. The car, authorities say, was not running.

The deputy spoke with mall security and also looked at surveillance video, an arrest report said. The video showed the woman leaving the two children behind at 5:23 p.m. “to go inside of a store,” the report noted. She returned at 5:42 p.m.

A manager at a store across from where Basta’s car was parked told the deputy she came inside the store, shopped and purchased “items,” the report noted. Basta insisted she only left the children alone to run to a vending machine to “get a bottle of water,” the report said. She told the deputy she did not go shopping.

The deputy, however, said she failed “to provide adequate care and supervision for her children, which could have resulted in injury or death.” The deputy noted the temperature outside was 85 degrees at the time of the incident.

A booking photo was not available. Basta told authorities she is a stay-at-home mother, according to the arrest report.

It is unclear who took custody of the children following Basta’s arrest.

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