Mom’s friend abandoned toddler at a stranger’s house. Dad lived next door, cops say

The 23-second surveillance video shows a woman run up to a Spring, Texas, home. In one hand, she holds two bags, and in the other, she grips the hand of a 2-year-old boy with his feet off the ground.

When the woman got to the door, the video shows her drop the boy down and ring the doorbell several times.

The woman then knocked on the door before turning around and running away, leaving the boy behind at the doorstep.

While the boy looked around, the woman ran to a car and drove away. That was at about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, according to a statement from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

The woman inside the home opened the door after she heard the knock, the sheriff’s office said on Facebook, and she called police.

“The 911 caller advised that she heard a knock at her door and when she went to answer the door she found a 2 year old black male child standing at her door with no adult,” the statement says.

Deputies who responded to the call went door-to-door looking for someone who might know the boy, Lt. Scott Spencer said in a recorded press conference. The search was unsuccessful.

The next morning, though, the boy’s dad was leaving his home in the same neighborhood when a reporter asked him if he knew anything about the boy. That’s when the dad recognized the boy as his own son, Spencer said.

The father identified to KPRC that the boy in the video is 2-year-old Royal Simmons.

After the dad learned of what had happened, police went to his home and learned that he had gotten a text from his son’s mom the day before, Spencer said. The text said one of her friend’s would drop the boy off at his home on Monday afternoon.

That never happened, Spencer said during the press conference, so the father assumed plans had changed and he left the neighborhood.

Then, that night, the friend dropped the boy off at the wrong home, Spencer said. The friend is the woman in the video.

The dad lives next door to the home in the video, KTRK reported.

Spencer said that the woman in the video has been identified, but she has not yet been found or interviewed by the sheriff’s office. She faces a child abandonment charge, which is a third-degree felony.

The friend put the child in “great danger,” Spencer said.

It is too early in the investigation to know if the mom will face charges, Spencer said, but he emphasized that she turned her child over to someone who she believed was a responsible adult.

The boy has been placed with a foster family as Child Protective Services work to reunite him with his family, Spencer said.