Florida Parents Arrested After 2-Year-Old Is Found Wandering Roadway Near Midnight, Deputies Say
A Florida driver who spotted something in the middle of Jones Road shortly before midnight on Saturday didn’t find an animal or a piece of debris. The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office says it was a frightened 2-year-old child walking alone in the roadway wearing only a diaper and tank top.
Deputies responded to Jones Road and Talisi Loop at approximately 11:39 p.m. on September 26 after the driver stopped and called 911. The woman got the toddler out of danger, and deputies said the child was crying and frightened but had not been injured.
Finding the child’s parents proved considerably more difficult, as deputies canvassed the surrounding area in search of the toddler’s home. The sheriff’s office says they located a nearby residence with its front door open, but nobody was there.
Deputies attempted to reach the residents by phone without success until they eventually made contact with the child’s father, 36-year-old Johnny JeanBaptiste. According to the sheriff’s office, JeanBaptiste hung up on them.
Deputies Waited for Parents To Return
Embedded Facebook post follows; please give it a moment to load completely.
JeanBaptiste and the child’s mother, 32-year-old Stacia Rebecca McMillian, returned to the residence at approximately 12:36 a.m. on September 27. That was 57 minutes after deputies were initially dispatched following the driver’s discovery of the toddler in the roadway.
The sheriff’s office says both parents were uncooperative with deputies after returning home, although its announcement does not provide further details about what that behavior involved. Both were arrested and booked into the Osceola County Jail on one count each of child neglect without great bodily harm.
The Florida Department of Children and Families was notified following the arrests, and the sheriff’s office says a family member took custody of the toddler. Despite being discovered alone in the middle of the roadway late at night, deputies said the 2-year-old was unharmed.
Jail Records List More
Osceola County jail records reviewed by Guessing Headlights list McMillian under case reference 2026 CF 003435 and JeanBaptiste under a separate reference, 2026 CF 003434. Each record lists one charge under Florida’s child-neglect-without-great-bodily-harm statute and shows the case status as pending arraignment.
The records display a $0 bond amount for both parents as of the September 27 entries. Because the records provided do not further explain what the $0 amounts represent, Guessing Headlights is not interpreting those entries as confirmation that either parent was ordered held without bond.
For the toddler, the encounter ended without the injuries that could easily have accompanied walking alone down a roadway shortly before midnight. For JeanBaptiste and McMillian, deputies say their return to the open-door residence nearly an hour later ended with both parents being taken to jail.
