Articles Posted in Felony Child Endangerment

Last year, two children were discovered face down and floating in a pool behind a home in La Mesa. The mother of the children, Tassie Behrens, claimed she put the children to sleep on the living room couch the night before and then joined her boyfriend in the master bedroom to sleep. According to detectives, Behrens said the oldest of the two children came into the bedroom about 8a.m. the next morning looking for his younger sister, implying she was no longer in the living room where the mother had left them. Behrens apparently ignored this and went back to sleep, only to get up an hour later and find them both drowned in the backyard pool. The children, one two years old and the other only eighteen months old, should have never been left alone and especially not where they would be able to so easily access the pool. Behrens, 28, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony child endangerment and was sentenced to four years in prison. The drowned children, however, were not all detectives found when they entered the house. The search of the property revealed a drug manufacturing business was underway as police found pipes, bongs, drug residue, exposed wires, butane cans and other dangerous things all within the children’s grasp. Behren’s boyfriend, 45-year-old Larry Dangelo, was the one renting the house and plead guilty to one count of manufacturing honey oil and another charge related to a different location. He was sentenced to eight years and eight months in custody and is required to serve half of his sentence in county jail and the other half under mandatory probation supervision.

Sources:
“Man In Drowning Case Sentenced On Drug Charges” – UT San Diego