Parents located after toddler found wandering on road - Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports

The father of a toddler found wandering on a busy road in a dirty diaper Saturday morning is being held on $50,000 bond and has been ordered to stay away from his son. 

Clarendon County Sheriff Randy Garrett says a woman driving to work at a bank on Highway 261 near Manning found the 2 1/2-year-old boy wearing a tee-shirt, soiled diaper and shoes walking on the road at about 9 a.m.  She picked him up and called 9-1-1.

Deputies took the boy door-to-door in the neighborhood trying to locate his family, but nobody recognized him. 

Sheriff Garrett says nobody filed a missing child report and the child went unclaimed for more than three hours.  At about 12:30 p.m., the Sheriff says a man claiming to be the boy's father went to the Sheriff's Office to pick up the child along with another man.

After he failed to answer certain questions regarding the boy, deputies determined that 17-year-old Nakeius Robinson was not the boy's father, and Robinson admitted the boy's father was his companion, who was waiting in the lobby. Robinson was charged with providing false information. He is a nephew of the boy's mother.

Garrett said deputies discovered that the father, Triequomy Brown, was wanted on a warrant for a traffic violation.

Sheriff Garrett said the boy was identified as Triquan Brown. Investigators determined the boy was found on the four-lane highway about 200 yards from the Forest Villa apartment complex where his father lived.

Brown was taken into custody on a charge of child neglect and providing false information to law enforcement. At a bond hearing Sunday, the judge ordered Brown held on $50,000 bond.

Robinson was released on $1,500 personal recognizance bond.

In court, both men admitted to lying to investigators about their identities. Robinson admitted his guilt in court.

"I'm not here to try you," the judge told him. "I'm just here to set your bond, okay?"

Major Kip Coker with the Sheriff's Office says Brown told investigators he fell asleep at about 7 a.m. Saturday and when he woke up, the boy was gone.

"It could have been a lot worse," says Coker. "A few minutes more, the child would have been in the middle of Highway 261 where there was a lot of traffic and possibly gotten hit." 

Sheriff Garrett says they located the boy's mother, who was questioned by the Department of Social Services.  Garrett said she was working at the time the boy wandered away and the boy's father was supposed to be taking care of him.

When Brown asked the judge how long he had to stay away from his son, the judge told him, "Until this has gone to court."

The Department of Social Services now has custody of the boy.

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