Man Charged with Child Neglect

A man who was supposed to be watching his two children along with two others faces child neglect charges after he allegedly left the small children unattended in an apartment that began filling up with smoke, a Mauldin Police report said.

The report, which redacted the 22-year-old suspect's name and address, said Mauldin police and fire were dispatched to an apartment on Old Mill Road on Tuesday after a neighbor complained to maintenance staff that a smoke alarm had been going off for several minutes in an apartment and that she could hear small children running around inside, the report said.

The suspect told police he had gone to a neighbor's apartment to borrow some sugar and was gone only about seven minutes. However, the woman who reported the incident said the alarm had been going off for more than 20 minutes by the time she alerted a maintenance worker, the report said.

A maintenance worker was able to let police inside the apartment, whereupon the oldest child in the group told an officer, "that thing was loud and we couldn't get it to stop!" the report stated.

When officers got inside, the apartment was filled was smoke and the children were quickly removed. The report didn't state the cause of the smoke.

The reporting officer stated in the report that had a fire broken out, none of the children were old enough to handle such an emergency. "I also advised [the suspect] that the children were fortunate that a neighbor heard the alarm and reacted before there was a fire and someone was injured or killed," the officer stated in the report.

The mothers of the four children had left the children in the care of the suspect so that they could go to work, the report said. The children were placed in their custody, while the suspect was arrested, charged and booked into the Greenville County Detention Center.