A felony West Virginia child neglect charge has been filed against a Reedsville woman accused of leaving her nonverbal, autistic five-year-old son unsupervised beside a high-traffic road while she allegedly attempted to steal a car in plain sight of its owner. Danielle Lee Murray, 37, is held at the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on a $25,000 bond.
What the Criminal Complaint Alleges
The charge, formally styled as ‘Child neglect creating risk of injury,’ was filed in the Magistrate Court of Preston County by the West Virginia State Police, according to WV News, which obtained the criminal complaint. The incident unfolded on 4 June in the area of Alexandria Drive in Reedsville, a small town in the north of West Virginia.
The original police dispatch was logged not as a vehicle theft but as a welfare check on a female. Officers arrived to find the vehicle’s owner had already called law enforcement to report that a woman had got into their car and attempted to take it. The caller described the suspect as a female who seemed ‘a bit off’ and was ‘unsteady’ and unable to stand upright.
Troopers located Murray walking approximately a mile from the scene, in the direction of a nearby petrol station. She denied being Murray when officers asked, but was identified regardless and placed under arrest.
The West Virginia Child Neglect Charge: The Boy’s Condition
While Murray was allegedly attempting to steal the vehicle, the five-year-old boy in her care had been left outside, unsupervised, in an apartment complex area described in the complaint as subject to heavy vehicle traffic. The child, who has autism and is nonverbal, was found by a neighbour in a distressed state, reportedly ‘freaking out looking for’ his mother, as local broadcaster WBOY reported from the complaint.
Investigators concluded that leaving a vulnerable, nonverbal child unattended in that environment ‘created a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury,’ per the criminal complaint cited by WV News. A family member subsequently took custody of the boy, authorities said. Area CBS affiliate WDTV confirmed the child had autism.
The combination of the child’s age, his inability to communicate verbally, and the volume of passing traffic in the complex appear to have been central to investigators’ decision to pursue a felony rather than a misdemeanour classification. Under West Virginia courts procedure, a felony child neglect creating risk of injury carries substantially higher sentencing exposure than a misdemeanour neglect finding.
Murray faces the West Virginia child neglect charge as her primary count. No charge directly related to the attempted vehicle theft appears in the reporting of the complaint, though prosecutors retain discretion to seek additional charges before any trial.
Subject to any further proceedings in the Preston County Magistrate Court, Murray’s case will determine whether the prosecution can establish beyond reasonable doubt that leaving the child in those specific conditions met the statutory threshold for felony-level neglect. The bond remains set at $25,000.
