Woman abandons kids on street corner, telling them ‘nobody loves them,’ Iowa cops say

A woman abandoned two children on a busy street corner, including one who is unable to care for herself because of a medical condition, Iowa authorities say.

Heather Ann Perez Miranda, who shares four children with the father of the victims, was arrested more than three months after the incident in Hiawatha, court records show.

The 6- and 8-year-old children were found by themselves on the “busy city street” in Hiawatha on June 30, according to a criminal complaint. They said they were left there by their mother, Perez Miranda, but an investigation revealed the kids are not the woman’s biological children.

“The children reported that their mother, the defendant, left them along the side of the road after telling them to get out of the truck she was driving and that nobody loved them,” police said in the criminal complaint.

Police said the 8-year-old girl has a “congenital deformity to her mouth/jaw area” and is unable to care for herself after having undergone a tracheostomy.

The children’s father was interviewed, and he said Perez Miranda had “punched him in the face” earlier in the day, according to the complaint. He left to get a hotel room, leaving the six children with his partner.

Perez Miranda later told investigators she drove to a western Iowa campground and had dropped the children off with her partner, police said.

But video surveillance and statements from the kids tied Perez Miranda to the incident, according to the complaint. She had her four biological children in the truck when she abandoned the other two children, police said.

Officers said Perez Miranda had “custody and control” of the kids.

Perez Miranda was charged Sept. 27 with two counts of neglect of abandonment of a dependent, two counts of child endangerment-abandonment and domestic assault, court records show.

She was booked into the Linn County Correctional Center on Oct. 8 on a $25,000 bond, jail records show.

Hiawatha is a northern suburb of Cedar Rapids.