Son left at mall while mom gambled

The case of a 10-year-old boy left unattended and without money at the Mall of America in Bloomington on Friday while his mother went gambling at Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake is a rarity, police said. Unescorted teens at the mall, however, are not.

Mall security officers found the boy about 7:30 p.m. Friday. His mother had left him there before noon with an unlimited-ride wristband for the theme park -- but no money, said police Cmdr. Jim Ryan. When security workers couldn't reach his mother, they called police, who had her paged at the casino after 9 p.m., Ryan said.

The 43-year-old woman, who had been staying at a Bloomington women's shelter, told police she couldn't get back to the mall until the midnight shuttle bus left the casino.

The boy was taken to St. Joseph's Home for Children in Minneapolis, and an investigation was begun that could lead to the mother facing charges of child neglect or endangerment.

The mother has not been arrested, Ryan said. "She lost focus on her priorities," he said. "Number 1 should be parenting, and it became gambling."

The boy told authorities that his mom had dropped him off before when she went gambling, and security officers said they had found him alone before, Ryan said.

He said unescorted kids, usually teenagers, are found past 4 p.m. every weekend and sometimes police are called to find their parents. He noted that some parents don't know that the mall curfew was changed last fall from 6 to 4 p.m. on weekends.

Neither police nor the mall track how often the curfew is violated or how unescorted kids arrive. But mall spokesman Dan Jasper said he doesn't think unescorted kids are found every weekend. "The typical case we get is 14- or 15-year-olds, and their parents are in the mall someplace. We reunite them and explain policy," he said.

"We have a parental escort policy so people don't think of the mall as a baby sitter, because we can't be," he said.

He said the mall hires extra staff members, called Mighty Moms and Dedicated Dads, who sit with unescorted kids in a safe room until parents are located. If parents can't be reached, police are called, he said.

One south Minneapolis woman said authorities called her two or three times last year to pick up a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins who took the light-rail train to the mall from the White Earth housing neighborhood. Hannah Lieder, 50, said the girl gave police her name because she was friends with the girl, who had a guardian but no parents. She said once, when she refused to retrieve the kids, someone put them on the train back to Minneapolis.

Neither Ryan nor Jasper was aware of the 10-year-old girl's mall excursions.

Ryan said Hennepin County curfew requires kids under 12 to be home by 10 p.m. on weekends and 9 p.m. on weeknights.

Jim Adams • 612-673-7658 • jadams@startribune.com