Fla. man abandons toddler, flees on foot

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla., Nov. 19 (UPI) -- An ex-con who says he was doing a friend a favor is back in jail in Florida after abandoning a young boy while fleeing police who thought he had been kidnapped.

Vincent Marchese, 31, said he told Brittany Higgs, 22, the mother of Alexiou Higgs, 3, he would take him to an Altamonte Springs park to play while she went a hospital for treatment of a back injury, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Marchese said after the park, he took the child back to his apartment for a nap, then to a store where security cameras showed them calmly entering and leaving about 7:15 pm Monday.

Brittany Higgs, who said she had been friends with Marchese for eight years, had reported her son missing hours earlier. Marchese said she never called him to check on her son.

"I would've just gone back to the hospital (if she had called him), Marchese said.

The van Marchese was driving collided with a cruiser driven by a sheriff's deputy who had spotted him. Marchese, an admitted drug addict with felony drug and attempted robbery convictions, said he fled because he didn't have a driver's license and only abandoned the boy after checking to make sure he was all right.

Marchese hid in bushes in Seminole County overnight and was arrested Tuesday after a sheriff's dog bit him.

"I should've been thinking about him a lot more than I was thinking about myself," Marchese said of the child.

After initially being accused of kidnapping, WOFL-TV in Orlando reported Altamonte Springs police instead charged Marchese with child neglect. He faces other charges stemming from the episode in Seminole and Orange counties.