Iowa mother of four Erin Lee Macke is in jail after leaving her four children home alone while she traveled to Europe on vacation, according to police.
Police discovered Macke’s children — ages 12, 12, 7, and 6 — unsupervised on Sept. 21 after they received a report about the children being left alone, according to Fox News. Officers reportedly learned Macke left the country the day before in order to travel to Europe until Oct. 1.
Police placed the children with relatives and notified Macke in Germany that she had to return home, Fox News reported.
Macke was arrested Thursday and is being held at Polk County Jail facing four counts of child endangerment and one count of giving a firearm to a person under age 21, The Des Moines Register reported.
Macke, 30, is not allowed to see her children while she waits for her Oct. 9 court date.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” Johnston police Lt. Tyler Tompkins told KCCI. “We have situations where parents go next door or parents may go out for the night, and while that’s not advisable either depending on the age of the children, obviously leaving the country is a totally different situation.”
Tompkins said Macke’s babysitter canceled on her, so she decided to leave the kids alone with the 12-year-olds in charge. The firearm charge was added after police found a gun was in reach of the children while they were unsupervised, KCCI reported.
Some on Twitter were relatively speechless about the story.
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