Mother accused of endangering three children

Police can’t find alleged baby-sitter named Lorelei

By Pete Bosak

BELLEFONTE — A Benner Township woman is charged with endangering her three girls — then-5-year-old twins and a 3-year-old — last year by barricading them in a bedroom and going out, leaving candles still burning inside the house.

Police were called after one of the twins turned up on a neighbor’s doorstep crying and saying “I don’t know where my mommy is,” according to police.

Tara E. Rhoads, 31, of 511 Millgate Road in Benner Township, is charged with three counts each of endangering the welfare of children and recklessly endangering another person after an alleged incident about 11:30 p.m. Aug. 22. She waived her case onto Centre County Court on Wednesday.

Bellefonte police said Rhoads used two chairs and a laundry basket to barricade the girls’ bedroom door and left them alone in their home at 113 Beaver Farm Lane, Bellefonte.

“And a bunch of candles were left burning in the apartment,” police wrote in a criminal complaint.

About an hour after Rhoads allegedly left the children, one of the twins turned up at a neighbor’s door.

She later told police she got out of her room with the help of one of her sisters who “pushed and pushed,” police said.

When the girl couldn’t find her mom, she put on her raincoat and went to the home of a neighbor, who called police, according to court documents.

Rhoads said she left the children with a baby-sitter she could identify only as Lorelei. The girls told police they didn’t have a baby-sitter that night and they didn’t know one named Lorelei. During the police investigation to find “Lorelei,” other acquaintances of Rhoads’ said they also never heard of such a woman and didn’t know Rhoads to have a baby-sitter by that name, court documents indicate.

Rhoads attorney, Centre County Assistant Public Defender Patrick Klena, said his client denies barricading her children and leaving them.

“Her defense certainly is dependent on finding the individual named Lorelei who is named in the complaint,” Klena said. Rhoads used “Lorelei,” whom she knew through friends, as a last-ditch baby-sitter, Klena said.

To his knowledge, Klena said Rhoads has joint custody with her ex-boyfriend, the father of the three children.

Pete Bosak can be reached at 235-3928.