Cops report baby found with alcohol

By Ed Runyan

The home was in ‘deplorable condition,’ a police officer said.

WARREN — Police and a deputy sheriff were called to a house on Harmon Avenue downtown after passers-by noticed an unsupervised 2-year-old boy on the front porch drinking out of bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey and Bud Light beer.

Police officers later determined the whiskey bottle contained about 1 inch of whiskey, and the beer bottle contained about 3 ounces of beer.

When Kurtis Ferri, 36, of Niles walked down Harmon with an unidentified female about 1:24 p.m. Thursday, they saw the boy in a diaper drinking from the bottles.

The man took the bottles from the boy while the woman went to the nearby Trumbull County Administration Building for help.

Ferri said at about the time Deputy Harold Firster of the sheriff’s department arrived, the boy fell down the stairs on the porch and then ran inside the house after Firster picked him up.

Warren Patrolman Brian Crites reported that, when he arrived, he went inside to find Tamara Bright, 22, of 277 Harmon N.E., at the top of the steps.

Bright said she didn’t know where the boy had gotten the alcohol, and that she’d been upstairs working in the bathroom with her 5-year-old daughter.

Bright was charged with a misdemeanor charge of endangering children and given a court date of 9 a.m. Thursday in Warren Municipal Court.

After a Trumbull County Children Services Board worker arrived, Crites discovered empty beer bottles and cans in the apartment, no food in the refrigerator or freezer and debris lying all over the apartment.

The home was “in a deplorable condition,” the officer wrote.

The boy’s diaper was hanging halfway down his backside and filled with feces and urine, so Crites was able to get Bright to change the diaper, he wrote in the report.

Children Services contacted Bright’s grandmother in Niles, who took custody of the two children.

runyan@vindy.com