Gaston County Mother Facing Child Abuse Charges After Leaving Three Young Children, Home Alone Drinking Vodka

GASTON COUNTY, NC.– Three young children, all under the age of seven, left home alone drinking vodka. Their mother is in jail facing child abuse charges.

A neighbor found the children running around outside their Gastonia apartment. WCCB spoke to a neighbor who saw it all, and called 911.

“It was very disturbing, I  wanted to make sure that the kids were safe,” says a man who wishes to remain anonymous.

He says his neighbor’s three young children were drinking from vodka bottles in the front yard of their apartment on Hartford Drive. He says the oldest really scared him.

“She kept trying to remove her clothes, climb trees, and break glass. It was something you don’t see every day.”

Arrest warrants show the girl is seven, her brothers are just four and five years old. Police say they had been left alone for at least seven hours. Their mother, 26-year-old Tyeisha Streater is charged with child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile.

Streater told a judge Tuesday that the children were asleep when she left her apartment Monday night to go to a laundromat. She says the vodka bottles were filled with something else.

“The alcohol bottles that was there, I had, was filled with water,” said Streater to a judge.

Her neighbor told WCCB he smelled alcohol on the children’s breathes.

Streater’s neighbor told me the whole thing was heartbreaking to watch.

Streater’s children are staying with their grandmother. She’s being held on $25,000 bond. The judge denied her request for a lower unsecured bond. Her next court date is June 15th.