When you are a police officer, you never know what you are going to experience from one day to the next. One moment, you may be having a perfectly normal day and the next moment, it is one of the most exciting or fearful things you have experienced in your life.
That is what happened to one police officer in Miami Beach, Brandon Miller. As a police officer with the Miami Beach Police Department, he is accustomed to seeing some unusual things but he wasn’t expecting what he saw that day.
A number of officers were responding to a call of a child who was wandering alone in the building on Ocean Drive. When they found the child, Miller scooped up the two-year-old girl and comforted her. It’s as if his fatherly instincts were kicking in immediately.
While Officer Miller continued to help the little girl, the other police officers were looking into why she was on her own. As it turns out, the girls parents, Daryl Lents, and Ciera Hurd had left all four of their children alone.
They expected that the 12-year-old daughter would take care of the other children, who were 11, 5, and 2. The three children were asleep, so the parents went out to a party.
After discovering what happened, the parents were arrested and the children were put into the care of the Department of Children and Family. All the children were okay and the parents were kept in custody while an investigation took place.
The mother and father brought the family from Baltimore to have a nice getaway in Miami. Unfortunately, things took a turn and it was a sad situation.
According to the police officer: “The little girl was just in her pamper and swimsuit top, completely soaked when we found her. The person we received the call from actually works security across from the building and he said he could just hear her screaming, screaming, ‘Mama, papa.’”
Miller had his own children and he knew what was needed. He said: “I have a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old at home, and I guess I went into dad mode. I saw her, and I thought about my son. I thought about my daughter.”
The parents were very upset about what happened and they said they were good parents who made a bad decision.
“It was a small, tragic mistake that I’m really hurt about and I don’t know what to do. We’ve been doing a lot of crying, a lot of crying, every time we see pictures we cry,” the father said.
The mother added: “We are really good parents, we are good people. We don’t leave our children, this is not a regular thing for us.”
The parents have visitation rights while the children are in custody.