An Oklahoma woman allegedly gave her 2-year-old daughter to her dealer.
When the Department of Human Services tracked down the woman, Ashley Rowland, and began asking her questions in April of last year, Rowland initially said her daughter “was with her father in Georgia.”
Not true, as officers later found out.
Pressed again, Rowland gave a different story: She’d given her to a man named “Carlos” (no last name, no identifiable features, no photo) who may have been the father.
“Carlos” had been her methamphetamine dealer. She admitted she was on drugs when she turned her child over to him, whereupon the man informed her he was going back to Mexico.
That was well over two years ago, April 2022.
“Where were family members? Where were neighbors?”
The Moore PD released a statement: “This is a very active case that we are working diligently on. All leads are being investigated in relation to the location of the child. If you have any information on this case, please contact the Moore Police Department.”
Last week, after questioning and investigation, Ashley Rowland was arrested on charges of child abandonment.
She was released a few days later, on November 5, on a $3,000 bond.
When asked, the judge’s office said the bond was supposed to be for $100,000, not $3,000, but Rowland was released before the paperwork went through.
Now she’ll need to be tracked down and taken back into custody.
Joe Dorman, CEO of Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, disputed the initial wrist slap of a bond. “Far too many of these kids fall through the cracks,” he said. “They need to do what they can to make sure that she is detained and assisting in trying to locate this child.
“After two years, you just don’t know. The fact this went unreported—where were family members? Where were neighbors? Anybody who suspected this child was in danger, by law, was supposed to pick up the phone and make that call.”
Ashley Rowland’s little girl would be five now, the age—if still alive—that she should be active in preschool and entering kindergarten, making friends, playing and wondering wide-eyed at the world as only a child can.
Oklahoma Human Services described the situation as “heartbreaking and unimaginable.”
And, we might add, all for a moment’s deadly high from half a gram of meth.
