By Dee DeQuattro, WPRO News

Cranston Police say they will press charges against a mother that allegedly left her baby inside a local dollar store for over an hour.

Col. Marco Palumbo of the Cranston Police said when the woman, who reported her baby missing a half hour after the child had been found, did not have a strong explanation for why her one and a half year old baby was alone in the dollar store. “Suffice to say that her explanations were not enough to explain why the child was left there that amount of time,” Palumbo told the WPRO Morning News with Tara Granahan and Andrew Gobeil.

The incident has been referred to the Department of Children Youth and Families. When the baby boy was found he was lethargic but responsive. He was brought to Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

“How long the child was left unattended we know it was for a minimum of forty minutes, it may have been much longer. The child was discovered by a shopper so we don’t know how long the child was left there prior to that,” said Palumbo.

The woman who found the child called into WPRO’s John DePetro Show. “I was in the store and I must have been there fifteen or minutes or so and I am getting ready to go to the register and there is a baby parked in a stroller the wrong way,” said the caller identified as Nancy. She said she went around the whole store asking if anyone was the parent.

“That child was extremely lethargic,” said Nancy. “They were handling him and everything and he wasn’t waking up his head was just wallowing around all over the place and we kept saying c’mon little buddy, c’mon little buddy. It was a very frightening and sad experience.”