Mom in ‘lost’ children case to face charges in court

By Patrick W. Connelly
Herald Staff Writer

July 15, 2008 09:24 pm

— Charges were held to court Tuesday for a Sharon mother police say left two young children unattended when she passed out during a drinking binge.
Natusha L. Schuller, 26, of 476 North St., was charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of children after she reported on June 28 her 2-year-old son and her 6-year-old niece were missing.
Ms. Schuller woke up around 7:30 p.m. to find the children weren’t in her apartment, prompting a neighborhood search before they were located at her father’s Frogtown Road home in Lackawannock Township.
Ms. Schuller told police she had last seen the children around 6:30 p.m. playing in her yard.
Her father, Edward Schuller, said he stopped by the apartment around 4:30 p.m. and took the children after finding them unattended.
“They were distraught, they were crying, they were hot,” he told District Judge James E. McMahon, Sharon.
Schuller said his wife found Ms. Schuller passed out and incoherent in the apartment’s bedroom before the couple left with the children.
The 6-year-old girl was in the “early stages” of getting sick and vomited the next morning, Schuller said.
An open beer bottle and a cocktail glass with residue of what appeared to be liquor were found in Ms. Schuller’s apartment after the search ended, Patrolman Adam Piccirillo said.
Mrs. Schuller drank “probably a case or two” of beer during the 24-hour period before she passed out, Piccirillo said she told him.
Neighbors pitched in to help police in the search, canvassing nearby streets and abandoned homes, Piccirillo said. A helicopter was on standby if needed, he added.
Ms. Schuller’s public defender James Goodwin argued the case didn’t have proper evidence to proceed to Mercer County Common Pleas Court because police didn’t test her blood alcohol level, but McMahon disagreed.
The boy was still in Ms. Schuller’s custody before the hearing and the girl was in the custody of her mother,Goodwin said.
Jennifer, 24, of 103 Fourth Ave., Sharon, was charged just days before the children went missing on June 23 with simple assault and disorderly conduct after an incident in the 400 block of E. Silver Street, police said.