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From left to right: Bradley Guerrero Santos and Roseanella Mendola Borja, as per Sarasota County Jail records. The backdrop shows Interstate 75 in North Port, Florida, where they are accused of leaving a boy behind (courtesy of Google Maps).
A Florida man and woman are accused of leaving a juvenile on the side of the highway with bags of guns and some cash before telling him to “take care of the house” and driving away.
Bradley Leon Guerrero Santos, 36, and Roseanella Mendola Borja, 35, stand accused of child neglect. Santos is also charged with the offense of being a parent or guardian allowing a minor to have unlawful possession of a firearm.
Cops began investigating the incident shortly before 6 p.m. on Oct. 1, when they received 911 calls about a suspicious male walking along the shoulder of Interstate 75 in North Port.
Officers spotted the juvenile. whose age is redacted from the affidavit along with his relationship to the suspects. He was “initially reluctant to explain” his predicament, but eventually tried to explain the odd series of events that led to him walking alone on the highway. The boy said when he arrived home from school that day, the suspects were “frantically” packing bags.
They told him they were going to “Guam or Idaho,” which they had never mentioned before. Then they hopped into a Toyota 4Runner and started driving. While in the car, the boy said he did not want to leave. So the couple allegedly pulled the car over to the side of the highway and gave him two bags that contained two pistols, ammunition and some cash.
The couple told him to “take care of the house” before driving away, cops wrote. He thought the suspects may have been testing his “mental fortitude” by leaving him on the side of the road.
Police went to the suspect home to find it in disarray, leaving it “wide open as if the family left in an abrupt hurry with no regard for their personal belongings,” cops wrote. Several phone calls to the couple went unanswered.
Detectives found the suspects and their vehicle more than four hours later at a home in Wauchula, roughly 60 miles northeast of North Port. The affidavit does not state why the couple was in such a hurry to leave.
Cops concluded the couple abandoned the boy on the side of the highway with “no means to care for himself and no prior custody arrangements.”
Santos and Borja remain in the Sarasota County Jail on a $50,000 bond. Their next court date is scheduled for Oct. 31.
