A Whitfield County mother has been charged after leaving her three children home alone while she worked and telling police she left them with a baby sitter, authorities said.
Codie Ballew Ball, 23, was charged with three counts of cruelty to children, three counts of abandonment of children and giving false statements, according to a police incident report.
She posted a $3,000 bond Tuesday and was released from jail, according to a jail employee.
But Whitfield County Sheriff's spokesman Capt. Rick Swiney referred calls about where the children were placed to the Department of Human Services, which didn't return calls seeking comment on Wednesday.
An automatic recorded message said the Balls' home number was "unreachable."
A call Monday night from the father of Ball's son prompted a sheriff's deputy to check on the boy at a home on Trailwood Drive, an incident report shows. When he arrived about midnight, the deputy found three young children - a boy and two girls - alone inside and the back door unlocked late Monday night, the report said.
The young boy, whose age police didn't specify, was sleeping on the floor in the doorway to a bedroom and another young girl had locked herself in another bedroom, the report stated.
Deputies also found a baby girl in her crib, crying with a wet diaper and a fan and electric floor heater running in the room, the report stated.
When the officer asked the young girl where her parents were, she told them at work.
Codie Ball was found at work at a local Kangaroo convenience store with her present husband, Vernon Ball, the report stated. Vernon Ball said he had gotten off work at 11 p.m. but thought the children were with a baby sitter.
When questioned, Codie Ball told deputies she had left the children with a baby sitter, the report showed.
When deputies asked her for the phone number to the baby sitter, she first told them she didn't have one, then gave a wrong number, the report stated.
When the baby sitter was finally contacted, she told police that Codie Ball told her to take the blame for leaving the children alone, but added that she never even went to the house that night.
Deputies then contacted the Department of Human Services and arrested Codie Ball, the report showed.