Woman sentenced for endangering children

Published 9:44 am Thursday, December 19, 2013

By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

A Maylene woman will spend the next two years on probation and must complete a parenting class after she pleaded guilty on Dec. 12 to leaving three children “unsupervised and alone for multiple hours.”

Berrones

Berrones

Rosa Elvia Berrones, 29, pleaded guilty on Dec. 12 to one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child after she was arrested by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office on Dec. 1.

According to Berrones’ arrest warrant, she being “a parent, guardian or other person legally charged with the care or custody of” three children ages 8, 4 and 1, left the children “unsupervised and alone for multiple hours” on Dec. 1. Her residence is listed as being on Kent Dairy Road in Alabaster’s Maylene community.

Berrones posted a $6,000 bond on Dec. 5 and pleaded guilty to the charge a few weeks later, according to court documents.

Through a plea agreement, Shelby County District Court Judge Ron Jackson suspended Berrones’ original 90-day jail sentence, and instead sentenced her to two years of unsupervised probation and ordered her to pay a $100 fine.

Jackson also ordered Berrones to “in so far as possible maintain a full-time job or be a student, and ordered her to complete a parenting class with Alabama Abuse Counseling by April 24, 2014.

Because child endangerment is a Class A misdemeanor, Berrones could have faced up to one year in jail and a $6,000 fine.