Mother abandons kids at Taste of Buffalo
A 32-year-old Buffalo mother gave her two young children to different strangers at last weekend’s Taste of Buffalo festival, transit police said.
Serena M. Hirsch allegedly gave her 3-year-old son to a 75-year-old West Side man, asking him to watch the child for 20 minutes.
She later gave her 2-year-old daughter, who was in a stroller, to a 45-year-old Depew man, asking him to keep an eye on the toddler, police said.
When Hirsch showed up intoxicated at a police command center at the downtown food festival later Saturday afternoon demanding to know why the strangers had her children, she was arrested on two felony counts of child abandonment, according to Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority police.
Hirsch also was ordered to undergo a
psychological evaluation.
Hirsch’s two toddlers and her teenage daughter, who was left unattended at the family’s South Buffalo home, have been removed from Hirsch’s custody.
Hirsch allegedly asked Louis C. Bertola if he would watch her son. Some two hours later, at about 3:20 p.m., Bertola approached Transit Officer Charles Loubert at Chippewa and Pearl streets and explained that the child’s mother never returned for the boy.
Others at the festival also approached Loubert because they, too, were concerned for the boy’s safety.
Bertola, of Porter Avenue, said he was willing to take the child home with him, but Loubert took the boy into custody and contacted two transit police lieutenants to help figure out what was happening.
After receiving a description of the mother - a woman clothed in “a purple dress with several gold chains around her neck” - police began searching the festival and encountered yet another man who approached them pushing a stroller with a 2-year-old girl.
Robert Mays, the Depew resident, told Lt. James Halliday a woman approached him asking if he would watch her daughter for 20 minutes, police said.
“The male [Mays] further stated it had been over two hours and the female never returned to retrieve her child. Mays stated that he did not know the child’s mother,” a police report stated.
Mays provided police the same description of the mother as Bertola had.
One of several witnesses who saw the little girl sitting in the stroller on Delaware Avenue, not far from Niagara Square, said he and others began wondering if the man was actually with the toddler.
“It was disturbing to see the little girl just sitting there unattended in a stroller on the sidewalk. We didn’t know if the man sitting nearby was with the child. He’d walk over once or twice and then sit 25 or 30 feet away from the stroller,” Timothy Schmidt, a witness, said Tuesday.
Lt. Michael Garrity notified officials at the Buffalo police command post that the mother might show up looking for her children.
“The mother did show up at the command bus highly intoxicated after officers were canvassing the area for over an hour,” the report stated.
Police said Hirsch, using profane language, demanded to know why Mays and Bertola had her children.
Officers then transported the family to transit police headquarters on Main Street, where the investigation continued.
The two children were checked by Rural/Metro Ambulance paramedics for injuries, and none were detected. At the same time, Erie County Child Protective Services was contacted, and caseworker Kevin White arrived to speak with the mother.
White decided to remove the children from Hirsch’s custody, police said. A third child, a 14-year-old daughter who had been left at the family’s Milford Street apartment, also was removed.
Hirsch, who also was charged with two counts of misdemeanor child endangerment, was held in the Erie County Holding Center until Sunday, when she was placed under supervised release approved by a City Court judge. She also was ordered to undergo a mental health review and return to court July 30.
The Buffalo News twice tried to reach Hirsch by phone and left messages on her voice mail but received no reply.
Check out the mug: 
LOL