(Blair, NE) – Police in Blair, Nebraska, late Thursday morning, arrested a woman from western Iowa, after Officers and the Blair Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department responded to a report of a locked vehicle with two small children- ages 3 years and 16-months old – left alone inside, crying and screaming. Fearing the kids were suffering from heat exposure, a Blair Police Sergeant entered the vehicle and recovered the children, who were secured in car seats.

As the Sergeant was removing the children from the vehicle, the children’s mother, later identified as 37-year-old Tanya Knudsen, from Missouri Valley, approached him. The woman said she had been delivering online orders and left the children in the vehicle while she made the deliveries. Witnesses and nearby surveillance cameras confirmed, that the children were left unattended in the vehicle for 25 minutes.

Tanya Knudsen

Blair Fire Rescue used a thermal heat detector and found the temperature inside the vehicle to be over 120 degrees. The two children were taken to Memorial Community Hospital in Blair for heat exposure. They were treated and released to family members under the supervision of Nebraska HHS Child Protective Services.

Tanya Knudsen was booked into the Washington County, Nebraska Jail, for Felony Child Abuse.