We will never understand how parents can just abandon their children. Too often, we hear about moms and dads whose lifestyles are incongruent with raising their kids, so they just up and leave them. Sometimes the children are left with a trusted adult, but other times, they’re left to fend for themselves. These kids very rarely live a lifestyle like that of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. Instead, their parents leave them in homes that are often unsanitary and unsafe.
Sheriff’s deputies in Brevard County, Florida, received a call about a child abandoned inside a home, but when they arrived, the child wasn’t exactly alone.
The child’s mother reportedly left him alone for an extended period.
According to court documents obtained by Law & Crime, a concerned neighbor called the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office about a home on Merrit Island with several “aggressive” dogs and a child left alone for multiple days. When deputies arrived, the boy reportedly said he could not open the door because the dogs were inside, but he spoke to authorities “through a bathroom window at the front of the house.”
The child gave the police his mom’s number.
The boy’s mother, 41-year-old Ashley Burdick, apparently had her phone turned off because the calls went directly to voicemail. The child, who deputies noted had autism, told a very sad story. He claimed his mother physically abused him and he once “became intoxicated after drinking a juice in the refrigerator that, unknown to him at the time, contained moonshine alcohol.”
Burdick reportedly left her son in a filthy home.
Deputies noted the home had multiple aggressive animals inside and feces covered the floor. The home was totally unsanitary and unfit for a child to live in, according to court documents, per Law & Crime. The child allegedly told investigators he was not enrolled in school and had been left in the past by his mother without any food. He claimed he “does not feel safe” in the home.
What kind of mother leaves a child like this?
Neighbors expressed their shock to Fox 35.
“It’s unreal. What is wrong with people today?” an unidentified neighbor asked.
“We found a lot of distressing things,” Tod Goodyear, public information officer for the sheriff’s office, told the news outlet. “This might have gone for a lengthy period of time without someone stepping in.”
Deputies arrested Burdick on April 22, 2026. She posted a $2,500 bond the following day. She faces a charge of child neglect without great bodily harm. The charge holds a maximum penalty of five years in prison. She’s due back in court on May 14.
Per Fox 35, she cannot have contact with her son, who is now in the care of a relative. The Department of Children and Families is also investigating the case.
In what world would any parent think this is OK? Where could this mother have possibly gone that was important enough to abandon her child in filth? There’s positively no excuse for this behavior.
