NORTH MANKATO — A 54-year-old North Mankato woman sentenced to serve jail time in 2006 for leaving her granddaughter buckled in a car seat while she was drinking has lost an appeal to have her conviction overturned.
The gross misdemeanor charge of child endangerment was filed against Nancy Christine Swedberg on Oct. 10, 2005, about two weeks after she had agreed to baby-sit her 2-year-old granddaughter. She was found guilty of the charge during a trial before District Court Judge Allison Krehbiel, not a jury, in March 2006. After the conviction, Krehbiel sentenced Swedberg to five months in jail and placed her on two years probation.
The conviction was later appealed on the grounds that, through the conviction, Krehbiel incorrectly determined that Swedberg’s intoxication created a situation that was likely to cause her granddaughter substantial physical harm. The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed Krehbiel’s ruling.
There is no listed telephone number for Swedberg and she couldn’t be reached for comment.
Swedberg’s son and his wife, who are not identified by name in appeals court documents, were taking a trip to Wisconsin when they asked her to watch their daughter. They knew she had a drinking problem and checked her house for alcohol before they left, court records said.
The following day Swedberg drank several vodka and lemonade drinks and eventually realized she didn’t know where her granddaughter was, court records said. She called a friend and told her she was drunk before going to a neighbor’s house to look for the girl.
Several people then helped Swedberg look for the girl. They later told police and social workers that Swedberg had vomit on her clothing and vomit in her kitchen, where a partial bottle of vodka and pitcher of lemonade were found.
After an hour of searching, the girl was found in Swedberg’s car still strapped into her car seat.
She was “crying and gasping for air and had twisted in the car seat so her back was facing out and her front was toward the back of the seat,” court records said. “As a result, it was difficult to remove her from the seat.”
The girl was wearing only a shirt, windbreaker and diaper and the diaper was full, witnesses said. The car was unlocked and the keys were in it.
Social workers put the girl in emergency protective custody because there were no immediate family members to take her, court records said. Her parents returned the next day.
“Daddy, I hanging in car seat crying Grandma Nan,” the girl told her father, according to court records. “Grandma Nan went to get a cookie. I not go to Grandma Nan’s anymore.”
Krehbiel found that the girl suffered “significant emotional harm” after being abandoned in the car seat. In her appeal, Swedberg argued it was only an hour and it was unlikely that the girl was, or could have been, harmed.
“We conclude that leaving a two-year-old child not capable of caring for herself unattended for at least an hour in these circumstances meets the statutory requirement of reckless endangerment,” the appeals court ruling said.
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