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Left inset: Tamara Stoiber (Alachua County Sheriff’s Office) Right inset: Sabine Thrift (Alachua County Sheriff’s Office) Background: A shed located on the 13500 block of Northeast U.S. Highway 301 in Alachua County, Florida (Alachua County Sheriff’s Office)
A mother and a grandmother of two young kids have been arrested after the children were found unsupervised and locked in a dark shed next to a highway, authorities said.
Tamara Stoiber, 37, and Sabine Thrift, 59, have each been charged with two counts of child neglect, while Stoiber has also been charged with two counts of false imprisonment, according to court records. They are both in the custody of the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.
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Early Saturday morning, at about 3 a.m., a “concerned citizen” called a sheriff’s deputy saying two children were abandoned in the area of Waldo, a small town northeast of Gainesville. Deputies arrived to the 13500 block of Northeast U.S. Highway 301 and spoke with two witnesses who had found the children, both of them 5-year-old girls, locked in a shed.
The witnesses told law enforcement that the kids were locked inside the structure with a brick placed against the door, “apparently to prevent them from leaving,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a social media post. There was no electricity or running water inside, and a large knife was placed on top of one of the girls’ backpacks “and could have been a hazard if the knife would have fallen or been knocked over while the children were sleeping,” an arrest report of Stoiber stated.
Furthermore, the girls “had been left without food or any way to call for help.”
The children were not severely hurt, but deputies described both girls as being malnourished, disheveled, and dirty, Orlando Fox affiliate WOFL reported.
“I want you to also keep in mind that these young girls are probably extremely scared, frightened, it’s dark, it is very early between midnight and 3 to 3.30 in the morning,” Alachua County Sheriff’s Office Captain and Public Information Officer Chris Sims told the outlet. “There is no lights on the outside of this shed either.”
He also pointed out how close the shed is to the nearby Highway 301, just over 100 feet.
“So, Heaven forbid these young girls walk out of the shed looking for help, they would unfortunately probably wander into a major highway and, and, you know, catastrophic results would probably take place,” Sims added.
According to the sheriff’s office, Stoiber, reportedly the girls’ mother, said she “stepped away for a quick errand” and left the children in Thrift’s care. However, law enforcement said Stoiber ended up being gone for several hours, and Thrift, said to be the girls’ grandmother, “allegedly refused to supervise them.”
After Stoiber’s departure, Thrift said she stayed at the shed for about two hours, according to Stoiber’s arrest report. However, she then left in search of Stoiber because “she did not want to babysit the children” — a trip that took two hours. Within this time period, deputies were called to the shed.
Thrift ended up finding Stoiber and telling her that she was “not a babysitter” and that Stoiber “needed to learn her lesson,” according to Thrift’s arrest report.
The arrest report also states that the witnesses who called the sheriff’s office detailed how, earlier the following day, Stoiber arrived at their residence “soaking wet” with the two girls, claiming to have walked from Gainesville to Waldo, roughly 14 miles. When one of the witnesses gave a “footlong sandwich” for them to eat, Stoiber reportedly ate the entire thing without sharing it with the girls. After allegedly locking the girls in the shed, she then left to go to a store with her boyfriend.
It is unclear if Thrift is Stoiber’s mother.
“The safety and well-being of children remain a top priority for our agency,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting children from neglect and abuse, and we encourage the community to report any concerns involving child welfare. Together, we can help ensure every child has a safe environment to grow and thrive.”
