Woman Says She Saw Grandmother Accused Of Leaving Toddler Get In A Scuffle
LAKEWOOD, Colo. (CBS4) - Police in Lakewood have arrested the grandmother Denver police say left a toddler in Civic Center Park after the fireworks last Friday. Now a woman says she saw the grandmother hours earlier in the park without the little girl.
Brenda Gallas, also known as Brenda Littlespottedhorse, was arrested on Thursday morning.
A Lakewood police spokesman says a tip led officers to a home in the 9600 block of West Arizona Avenue around 11 a.m. That is where friends told CBS4 the woman has been staying. Littlespottedhorse was taken into custody on a warrant for probation violation from Pennington County, South Dakota. She was taken to the Jefferson County jail.
Anthony Cardenas is in a relationship with her and called the situation a "misunderstanding." He says they were selling items on the street and the child got left alone because Littlespottedhorse believed the child's mother picked up the girl during the fireworks show.
Police say the mother was out of state. She contacted them after a friend told her about the girl. According to family, the girl sometimes stayed here with her grandmother.
Cardenas says Littlespottedhorse had been drinking. He says the girl is now with her mother near Denver.
A woman in the park that night, Jasmine Rehder, told CBS4 she saw Littlespottedhorse without her granddaughter hours before the girl was discovered abandoned. She wonders if the toddler was left alone a lot longer than originally thought.
Rehder said she was listening to the band play when she heard a woman scream.
"I saw her (Littlespottedhorse) with her hands around the woman's neck," Rehder said.
Rehder says that's when she saw security pull Littlespottedhorse away from another woman in the crowd and police got involved. She didn't know who the woman was and didn't think much of it until Wednesday when she saw Littlespottedhorse's photograph on CBS4.
"It's almost a state of shock that hit me like, 'That was the woman that was right next to me.' And I never saw a little girl there," Rehder said.
While event sponsors can't be sure Littlespottedhorse was involved in the scuffle, they did respond to one. Rehder says she is sure.
"I saw her, I saw her boyfriend, I never saw the little girl," she said.
She now wonders how long the little girl was alone before she was discovered.
"Where was this girl the whole time? This woman was over sitting right to me. Why didn't I ever see the little girl next to me?"
Littlespottedhorse is currently being held in the Jefferson County jail. She likely won't be sent back to Denver because the charge she faces in the city is minor, similar to a citation. She could face extradition to South Dakota on the probation violation.
