A Linton woman is being charged with neglect of a dependent after her child ran away from home.

Rikki Nicole Sharp, 34, was arrested last Friday, March 22.

A warrant was issued for Sharp’s arrest last week following an investigation by Officer Adam King of the Linton Police Department into an incident that occurred in late February.

Although the jail log lists Sharp with a home address in Hymera, she was living in Linton at the time of the incident.

Officer King was dispatched around 8 p.m. on Wednesday, February 27, about a possible runaway child who had been seen running out of an apartment on 7th Street NW and was headed towards 5th Street NW.

From the description given of the child and because the LPD had responded multiple times in the previous couple of weeks to calls involving the child, Officer King went to the child’s residence.

The door was half open and King reported he smelled a strong odor of marijuana. He yelled Sharp’s name several times but did not get a response.

Upon entering and continuing to yell her name, Sharp, who was in a bedroom, finally woke up and the officer asked if she knew where her children were. She first said they were at her mother’s house, then when told about the report of her child running towards 5th Street NW, she said she forgot that she had picked up the kids. Besides the child who ran, another child was still in the apartment.

When Officer Joe Riley arrived to assist, he talked to Sharp while Officer King went to a gas station approximately a mile away where he found the child.

Riley reported that Sharp admitted she had been smoking marijuana earlier and she gave him consent to retrieve paraphernalia and a substance that field-tested positive as marijuana.

Sharp and the children were then interviewed by a caseworker from the Department of Child Services and King reported the children were placed in the care of a family member.

Sharp is now facing preliminary charges of:

Neglect of a dependent – defendant places dependent in a situation that endangers the dependent, a Level 6 felony,
Possession of marijuana, a Class B misdemeanor, and
Possession of paraphernalia, a Class C misdemeanor.