An 8-year-old child's knock on a neighbor's door asking for food set off a chain of events that ended with a west Bexar County mother in handcuffs. Shaquita Evans, 36, was arrested Sunday in connection with an incident the previous week, booked on a charge related to child abandonment after deputies say they found her three young children home alone with almost nothing to eat.
Welfare Check Uncovers Children Home Alone
According to an arrest affidavit detailed by KSAT, Bexar County sheriff's deputies responded to a welfare-check call on Oct. 29 at Evans' home on Bushbuck Field. When they arrived, they found three children — ages 8, 2 and 1 — home alone. The call to the sheriff's office had been triggered when the 8-year-old knocked on a neighbor's door asking for food.
Deputies reportedly found the home in disarray, with only frozen meat and canned foods available for the children to eat, per the affidavit account. Evans later returned home after deputies reached her by phone. She told investigators she had been out of work and was at a job interview at the time deputies arrived, the affidavit states.
Alibi Unravels, Affidavit Says
The case took a turn when a woman who had initially offered Evans an alibi later admitted to investigators that Evans had asked her to lie, according to the affidavit. Evans also told investigators she allowed her children to stay home from school occasionally and questioned why she even had to send them to school, the same document states. Evans was subsequently booked into jail on a charge related to child abandonment.
Neighbors Describe a Pattern
Neighbor Daniel Clough told KSAT 12 News he often saw the older two children wandering the streets alone, sometimes in the middle of the school day, and that he usually saw them running around without adult supervision. He said the oldest child had asked neighbors for water and food before, and they had given her some. “She'll come up and ask for water and food, so we've given her some stuff,” Clough said. He added that he worried the children could be taken or hurt out on the street, with neighbors having no way to reach anyone in an emergency.
Not an Isolated Case in the Region
Evans' arrest follows a separate case in west Bexar County from 17 days earlier, in which Nataly Nicole Perez and Amber Nicole Robisheaux were accused of leaving four children unattended for about four hours while stealing property from a residence, according to KSAT's report on that incident. Records showed Perez facing a theft charge along with four additional child-endangerment charges, while Robisheaux faced a theft charge alone.
A similar case surfaced in Jefferson County, where a grand jury returned six indictments against 31-year-old Dawn A. Vickers, one for each of her children, accusing her of abandoning or endangering them, according to FOX San Antonio. In that case, officers reportedly found six children ranging from infancy to age 10 at the residence, with food described as scarce — just a few canned goods and a box of instant mashed potatoes. The outlet reported the children, including an 8-month-old, were home alone while their mother was working at a Waffle House in Port Arthur.
Under Texas law, a person with custody, care or control of a child younger than 15 commits an offense if they intentionally abandon the child in a place under circumstances that expose the child to an unreasonable risk of harm, according to a historical version of Texas Penal Code Section 22.041. That statutory language describes only the general offense and does not establish the specific charge or outcome in Evans' case.
