KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The woman who police say snatched a Grandview boy and hung him over a balcony faced a judge on Wednesday, and her past criminal history shows it is not the first time she has been in trouble for that crime.
In court on Wednesday, Edwina Bates, 44, was once again charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
Back in march of 2007, bates took a child from an apartment complex near 82nd and Prospect. First charged with kidnapping, Bates’ attorney pleaded it down to endangering a child. The very same crime she is charged with in this case.
Police say, in 2007, she grabbed a five-year-old boy from the Rockford Hill Apartments. The child’s father ran after her and the two fought over the boy.
Bates yelled “He’s mine! I’m going to steal him!”
Then hit the child’s father in the face. Eventually he was able to get the child away from Bates and she ran off.
It’s a story that shocked and scared Nicole Novotny.
She says Bates, who lives in the adjoining building, also grabbed her four-year-old son on Monday, while the child was playing in front of the apartment building at 119th and Newton in Grandview.
RELATED: 4-year-old boy taken by woman in front of wheelchair-bound mother, witnesses rescue him
“She was going around in circles in the parking lot saying she was high and she was foaming at the mouth,” said Novotny.
Novotny says Bates dragged her son to the third floor of the apartment building, hanging him over the side of the railing. A neighbor ran after Bates and saved the child.
For the similar incident in 2007, Bates received a sentence of five years’ probation.
“Probation’s not enough. There needs to be jail time, ‘cause obviously she just did it again and if she gets out she will probably do it again,” said Novotny.
Although she got probation for the 2007 case, bates did go to jail in 2011, after getting a DUI, which was a violation of her probation and as a result was sent to jail. She spent 120 days inside, rehabbing and was released. She received a 30 day sentence for the DUI which she served at the same time as the the probation violation.
Monday, police say Bates told her she had been drinking and smoking marijuana.
