Articles labeled: ocala

A Florida woman and her son, allegedly kidnapped by the child’s father, have been found safe.

Rashell Renee Pennell was found locked inside a gas station bathroom in Lexington, S.C., early Monday morning. The woman told investigators that 45-year-old Robert William Custer, her former boyfriend and the father of her child, put a handkerchief to her nose and mouth Sunday evening and forced her into his conversion van in Ocala, Fla., at an arranged meeting to pick up their son at the end of a visitation.

“The father walked up to the vehicle, had a handkerchief or some type of cloth, and put it to the mother’s mouth and nose, causing her to pass out,” Lexington County Sheriff James Metts said at a news conference Monday.

Wow, can’t imagine why this mom wouldn’t want to spend more time with her little angels. Melissa G. Dean, a mother in Ocala, Florida, apparently would leave the house for days at a time — she was, in her words, “on strike” — leaving her four teenage boys to fend for themselves. Apparently the teens are out of control, and she just couldn’t take it anymore. Dean was subsequently charged with child neglect, and when reporters showed up on the scene to get the scoop, her kids demonstrated why Dean should perhaps get a lenient sentence:

On Wednesday FOX 35 sent a reporter and photographer to the family’s home for a story. When they got there Dean’s sons walked up to the news car when they pulled up and started swearing, and yelling out racial slurs three times the kids came back at the news crew. After the first time, the FOX 35 news crew called 911. The four kids then surrounded the FOX 35 news photographer. One of the kids stood behind him with a pipe in his hand while another kid threatened to hit him.

When police showed up they talked to some of the kids, who had scattered then took a report. A woman with the Department of Children and Families also showed up. We’re told the boys are staying with neighbors. No word on where the mother is after bonding out of jail.