Heather Nicole Adkins

A woman was indicted Friday for abandoning her young son, now 6, on the side of a road. Heather Nicole Adkins, 32, faces one count of kidnapping and one count of child endangering.

According to the Hamilton County prosecuting attorney’s office in Ohio, a driver found the boy, then 5, alone on Sheed Road in Colerain Township. The child–who police have said is non-verbal and on the autism spectrum–was soaking wet from the rain.

”I immediately stopped and I was like ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t normal,’” bystander Ronald Reese, who found the boy, told WKYT.

He said he found the child while on the way to pick up food for dinner. The child looked like he was “in a daze as he walked along a road with no sidewalks.”

“Officers ultimately were able to identify the victim based on a tip called in by a citizen from Shelbyville, Indiana,” prosecutors wrote on Friday. “They also determined that this child’s mother, Heather Adkins, was known to drive a white Chevrolet Trailblazer.”

Cops had determined that the boy was dropped off on Copper Creek Lane from a white Chevrolet Traiblazer.

Adkins was taken into custody after a 911 call about her “acting irrationally,” Georgetown Police Assistant Chief Darin Allgood in Kentucky has told WKRC. Authorities learned that she had an unpaid fine from 2011.

Adkins lived in Shelbyville, Indiana, about 75 miles from the Cincinnati area, police have said. She and another adult had dropped off two of her other children at a friend’s home in Tazewell, Tennessee. She went back with the other adult towards Indiana, but they abandoned the boy in Ohio, authorities said.

It took her a while to give WKYT straight answers about why she left the boy on the road. She first said she meant to leave him with someone named “Patty,” then said, “No, I left him there with Brad, didn’t I.” Then when reporter Jeremy Tombs confronted her on the contradictory answers, she said, “No, I didn’t leave him with anyone.”

He asked Adkins why she did it.

“To save him for me,” she said.

Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

[Booking photo via Scott County Detention Center]

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