DOCUMENT: Stupid, Crime

Kids Left Home Alone Watching "Home Alone"

Indiana mother, 25, busted on neglect charges

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Home Alone Indiana

DECEMBER 21--An Indiana mother left her two young boys home alone watching “Home Alone” when she went to work, a parenting miscue that resulted in her arrest on child neglect charges.

Acting on a tip, police went to a residence in Muncie Tuesday afternoon and found the children--ages seven and four--by themselves inside the home. When cops knocked, the older boy exclaimed, “It’s the police!”

The children, however, did not initially open the door. The older boy called an aunt, who responded to the home and convinced the child to let officers inside.

“The children were on the couch watching ‘Home Alone,’” according to a Muncie Police Department report.

A police investigation determined that Taylor Cumings, 25, had left her children in the residence without supervision (but with the 1990 comedy starring Macaulay Culkin playing). As reported by The Star Press, Cumings told police that she kept her older son out of school to watch the younger child, who had a fever.

Cumings said that she left for her job around 7 AM, adding that she was unable to find someone to watch her boys. A cop noted that Cumings admitted she “had done it before but almost always stays” with her children or has a babysitter. 

Charged with two couunts of neglect of a dependent, Cumings (seen above) was booked into the Delaware County lockup on $10,000 bond. She does not currently appear on the jail’s inmate roster.

The Cumings residence, seen below, is a more modest dwelling than Kevin McAllister’s Illinois digs. (2 pages)