State takes custody of children with mother in prison

Wyoming County Sheriff Brad Ellison said a Rock View woman stayed in the South Region Jail on Monday on a $ 10,000 bond after her four-year-old was found outside in her underwear just after dark last week.

Savannah Renee Privett, 24, who lived in the Piney Garden Apartments with her two children, has been charged with double child neglect.

A witness told MPs that the child was found outside looking for her mother. The witness knocked on Privett’s door. Nobody answered, but the witness could hear the other child crying and went inside, Ellison said.

Privett’s two-year-old was found alone in the apartment behind a children’s gate.

Privett was in a neighbor’s apartment and appeared to be under the influence of marijuana, witnesses told MPs.

Privett first told the MPs that she had only been in the neighbour’s apartment for a few minutes and had kept both apartment doors open. Later, she told MPs, she may have been in the apartment for two hours.

The state Department of Health and Human Services has taken both children into custody, Ellison said.

– Mary Catherine Brooks