A barefoot 3-year-old wandering alone along a busy Tampa roadway near the University of South Florida led deputies to an apartment where four more young children were found unsupervised, with the stove left on and smoking and the front door wide open. The child's father, 41-year-old Glenn Jones, was arrested when he returned home and now faces five counts of felony child neglect.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to North 42nd Street near the intersection of Hellenic Drive around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday after a passerby reported seeing a child wandering along the roadway, according to WFLA. Deputies traced the child back to a nearby home at the Willow Brook apartment complex, where they found four more children inside with no parent or caregiver present. Per HCSO, the station reports the youngest children were wearing soiled diapers when deputies arrived.
The timeline places the initial dispatch slightly earlier than some accounts, with FOX 13 Tampa Bay reporting deputies were sent to the scene at 8:38 p.m. Thursday after the same report of a barefoot child alone on the heavily trafficked corridor. The station also notes the apartment sits in Tampa's unincorporated University community, a densely populated residential area directly adjacent to the USF campus.
Smoking Stove Posed Immediate Danger
Inside the apartment, deputies found the door open and the stove left on and smoking, conditions the sheriff's office said posed a direct hazard to the children left behind. According to the children's account relayed by investigators, their mother was at work when the kids were left in the care of their father, Jones, who was not present when deputies arrived.
The danger from an unattended stove is far from rare. Unattended cooking equipment is the leading factor in residential cooking fires, which account for roughly 49 percent of all reported home structure fires nationwide each year, per the National Fire Protection Association. Separate research from State Farm shows nearly 70 percent of those cooking fires break out during evening hours between 5 and 8 p.m., squarely within the window deputies responded to the Willow Brook complex.
Jones was arrested upon returning to the apartment and was transported to the Orient Road Jail in Tampa, the primary Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office booking facility, following his arrest.
Felony Charges Carry Years of Exposure
Jones was charged with five counts of felony child neglect, one for each child found in his care. Under Florida Statute § 827.03(2)(d), child neglect without causing great bodily harm is a third-degree felony, carrying penalties of up to five years in prison, five years of probation, and a $5,000 fine per count, according to Hanlon Law. With five separate counts, Jones faces substantial statutory exposure if convicted on all charges.
Florida law enforcement protocol requires that felony child neglect arrests trigger mandatory notifications to the Florida Department of Children and Families, which opens a child protective investigation to evaluate home safety and custody arrangements, the Miami Herald reports. State guidance also advises that children under 12 generally should not be left unsupervised, and minors should not be made responsible for siblings younger than 15, though Florida statute does not set a specific minimum legal age for leaving a child home alone.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office maintains dedicated Child Protective Investigations and Special Victims units that coordinate with regional child welfare authorities on cases involving severe neglect and endangerment. The case follows a recent 17-count Lutz case in which deputies arrested a mother after finding five children living in neglected conditions, underscoring a string of recent child welfare arrests across the county.
