What is going on down here? First we got newlyweds getting arrested for trying to meet a hooker on their honeymoon, and now we've got moms abandoning their kids at bars to go on a drunken boat trip on Mother's Day. Special occasions: You're doing it wrong, Florida.
Billie Jean Williams, 27, and Mary Joyce Daffron, 28, were arrested in Ocala Sunday and charged with child neglect.
Williams and Daffron each have an 8year-old and a 6-year-old child respectively, and decided to celebrate the holiday at Gator Joe's Bar and Grill, a beachside restaurant. According to The Ocala Star Banner, the children ended up informing the restaurant's staff that they couldn't find their mothers. The kids had been playing on the beach for about an hour and realized that while their belongings were left undisturbed the moms had vanished.
A man named "John," approached police. He said he knew one of the women from high school and had seen them get into a boat about an hour earlier.
Turns out the women had ditched the kids to go on a booze cruise. Emphasis on the booze. In fact the women were so intoxicated that when the boat approached the dock both women fell in the water while trying to get off.
Williams started yelling at police when she was confronted and claimed she had only been gone for 10 minutes. She said she had left the kids in the care of one of their godfathers. Turns out she was trying to pass "John" off as the godfather, but the children said they had never met him before that day.
Police determined that the women had indeed been gone for more than an hour and hadn't bothered to leave their children in the care of anyone. They spent the rest of their Mother's Day behind bars.
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