A 19-year-old woman who allegedly tied up her two-year-old daughter and left her at an abandoned animal hospital on Spanish Town Road in Kingston to attend a dancehall concert, spent last night in police lock-up and is expected to be formally charged tomorrow.

According to the police, Nicolette Lettford on Friday allegedly bounded the baby's hands and left her on the old hospital compound so she could attend 'Sting' - a popular stage show - that night.

A passer-by, police said, heard the child crying and alerted a police officer from a nearby community.

Fire-fighters were also alerted and, upon their arrival at the premises, which is located opposite the May Pen Cemetery, they found the child in a section of the abandoned building. The toddler was stooping and her wrists were bound with elastic bands, the police said.

She was handed over to the Denham Town police and later taken to the Bustamante Hospital for Children for examinations.

Late yesterday afternoon, the police told the Sunday Observer that doctors suspect that the child might be bleeding internally.

Lettford was later arrested on Friday when police - after searching her home on Goffe Way in Denham Town - found her getting dressed shortly before 9:00 pm at her friend's house on nearby Albert Street in the community.

"We will have to wait until Monday when all of the tests and diagnosis come back from the doctor before we can know exactly what are the charges against her," head of the Kingston Western Police Division, Superintendent Delroy Hewitt, told the Sunday Observer yesterday.

"What we understand is that the child might also be suffering from internal bleeding, probably there was some amount of abuse," said Hewitt. "So when all the results are in
we will know what to do exactly. Right now she is being held for child abandonment."

Hewitt said that Lettford was being detained in the female lock-up at the Central Village Police Station in
St Catherine.

she fi