LEXINGTON, Ky. _ A woman who abandoned six kids at a Walmart in Adair County was later found and arrested in Pulaski County, police said.
Amanda Jardinez, 33, of Somerset, took six children, two of whom were hers, to Walmart in Columbia on Friday and told them to find a worker to talk to, Columbia police said.
Police said she tried to retrieve a MoneyGram transfer and then started to leave the store. When three of the children tried to follow her out, police said "Jardinez stopped, turned back and made them go back inside."
Police said the kids ranged in age from 6 to 11 years old.
Jardinez left with a man, James Holovich, and his 5-year-old daughter, police said.
Columbia police had asked for the public's help locating Jardinez, and on Saturday evening she was arrested by a Pulaski County sheriff's deputy and a Kentucky State Police trooper.
Jardinez is facing six counts of first-degree wanton endangerment and six counts of abandonment of a minor. She was being held Tuesday in the Rockcastle County Detention Center on $20,000 bond.
On Monday, she was sentenced to 10 days in jail in an unrelated case. Jardinez was charged with fourth-degree assault in May in Rockcastle County after police were called to a Shell station about a woman and man fighting, court records show.
The man told police that he had met Jardinez to pick up his children, and she asked him for money. When he told her he didn't have any, "she started fighting him and punching him all over," according to court records.
Jardinez had been wanted for failure to appear in connection with that case.
Court records indicate that she had misdemeanor convictions earlier this year for disorderly conduct and public intoxication involving a controlled substance.
