Woman leaves kids home alone in three-week search for love

A WOMAN who allegedly left her two young children home alone for three weeks while she travelled across the country to visit a man she met on the internet has been charged with child endangerment.

The children, aged seven and four, had only frozen food and dry cereal to eat after their milk ran out and were briefly left without lights or electricity when a windstorm swept through southern California, knocking out power to their apartment in the Orange County suburb of Placentia, police said. Their mother had also disconnected the phone before she left.

The girl, aged 7, and boy were discovered huddling in a back room, by police responding to calls from a neighbour who heard cries coming from the apartment. Their mother, Janet Chen, aged 31, was arrested after returning from North Carolina on Thursday.