By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

COLUMBIANA – A 24-year-old Birmingham woman will spend the next two years in the community corrections department after she pleaded guilty to leaving a baby in a hot car while she shopped in an Alabaster shopping center last summer.

Deidra Nicole Williams, who lists an address on Golden Crest Circle, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of third-degree domestic violence during an Oct. 11 hearing in front of Shelby County District Court Judge Daniel Crowson. Through a plea agreement, the charge was lessened from the felony child abuse charge she was originally facing.

The Alabaster Police Department arrested Williams on July 2, 2016, and charged her with the child abuse count. Williams was released from the Shelby County Jail the day after she was arrested after posting a $5,000 bond.

APD Lt. Grant Humphries, who is in charge of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division, previously said officers responded to the parking lot of the Southbrook Village shopping center in Alabaster on the afternoon of July 2, 2016, after concerned citizens saw Williams’ 5-month-old child alone in the locked 2007 Mazda 6, which was not running.

According to the National Weather Service office at the Shelby County Airport, Alabaster saw a high temperature of 97 degrees on the afternoon of July 2, 2016.

Alabaster police officers, firefighters and medics responded to the scene, and Williams walked out of a nearby store and opened the vehicle’s doors for emergency responders, Humphries said.

The child underwent a precautionary medical check, and was turned over to the Shelby County DHR.

Since she was arrested, Williams “has complied with DHR and attended all required parenting classes,” Crowson wrote in a July 26 order. In July, Williams was granted Department of Human Resources-superivsed contact with the child.