Mum Left Children in Manchester Car To Go Drinking

7 October 2011, 16:18 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A mum has been given a suspended sentence for leaving her young children in a car in Manchester while she went out drinking.

A mum who abandoned her two children in an unlocked car to go out drinking was today given a suspended jail sentence after a judge told her she should be "utterly ashamed''.

Kayleigh McNaughton, 21, left her three-year-old and nine-month-old baby in the car alone for more than an hour in the early hours of a Saturday morning while she drank and danced in a nearby bar with a friend.

A member of the public called police at 3.07am on August 13 this year, and officers found the two boys in the red Peugeot car which was dirty, strewn with rubbish and smelled of wet nappies and vomit.

The car was left in a side street off the busy "Curry Mile'' in the Rusholme district of south Manchester, bordering Moss Side.

Denise FitzPatrick prosecuting, told the court officers asked the older child "where mummy and daddy were?''

"To which he replied, 'mummy that way,' as he pointed down the street.''

When McNaughton returned 40 minutes later she was unsteady on her feet and smelled strongly of alcohol, Manchester Crown Court heard. The children, who have different fathers, are now with foster parents.

McNaughton, who had been living in Glasgow before setting up home in Manchester this summer, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two counts of wilful neglect or abandonment of a child.

She was given a four-month jail sentence suspended for two years and ordered to do 200 hours community service.