Woman discovered some hours later “visibly drunk”
The mother of the child abandoned in the early hours of this morning in a pushchair near Entrecampos railway station in Lisbon was located at 9.30am, ‘visibly drunk, the PSP has told Lusa.
A source from the Public Security Police (PSP) revealed that the child “will be taken away from the mother”, under article 91 of the law on the protection of children and young people in danger, “since the mother is not suitable to keep (her) and there are no known relatives”.
Initially, the PSP said the abandoned child was a boy, but this information was later corrected. It is a three-year-old girl. Mother and child are from São Tomé e Príncipe, according to the same source.
The alert about the child’s abandonment was raised at around 06:00 by a passer-by who witnessed a person leaving a pushchair on Avenida 5 de Outubro, next to Entrecampos station, and leaving.
Following the alert, police were called to the scene and the child was taken to Dona Estefânia Hospital in Lisbon to be checked by health professionals, the PSP said – stressing that when she was found the little girl was in a ‘normal’ state of health.
The police then carried out enquiries to try and identify the person who had abandoned her, including using CCTV images from various establishments near the site.
At around 9.30am, the child’s mother was located when the police were searching the area for evidence and recognised the woman on the CCTV images.
“She was seen in the street and was apprehended and is now being questioned at the 11th PSP police station in Penha de França,’ said the same source.
The child is still in hospital and has already undergone a medical assessment which ‘does not indicate any specific care’, said the PSP, adding that the girl has ‘a congenital disability, a malformation’.
As for the mother, aged around 25, she is still being questioned at the police station. Police and public prosecutors are considering issuing a warrant for her detention, bearing in mind the evidence they have is that she had been “in a bar during the early hours of the morning, and after leaving the bar, abandoned the child in the street.
During questioning, the woman’s speech was “not coherent”, the police source adds – and she presented “disparate ideas every time she spoke”. She even began by saying the child had been kidnapped.
The child will remain in hospital until she is discharged by a doctor. The next stop after hospital will almost certainly be an institution.
According to police, the mother is guilty of the crime of exposure and abandonment.
Lusa
