CANARSIE, BROOKLYN (PIX11)—
The front door of Dalisha Adams's apartment in a Glenwood Road public housing project is padlocked, and clearly shows where somebody had to break it down to arrest the 26-year-old mother accused of abandoning her daughters Diani, 4, and Dominae, 2, on a frigid Sunday afternoon.According to the girls, Adams left them alone on the sidewalk in front of the apartment where the girls' paternal grandmother lives, in a public housing building a little over a mile away from the girls' home. Very little in Adams's profile indicates why she would do what police -- and her daughters -- say she did.
Adams's in-laws told PIX11 News that she works full-time as a security guard, a fact that she confirms on her MySpace page. Below the job she lists in her profile is her salary, which she claims is $30,000 to $45,000 a year. That pay, consistent with industry standards, shows she's no millionaire as she supports herself and three children -- her oldest daughter, Dynasty, 8, was not left on the sidewalk. If she was having trouble making ends meet, she needed to not look farther for help than her workplace. She stands guard at the Brooklyn office of the city's Human Resources Administration, or HRA, the borough's clearing house for family assistance.
The building directory shows a homelessness diversion office, employment services and the offices of the family support agency CAMBA, among other aid groups. "She could get help," Philip Perez, who knows Adams from his regular visits to the HRA office to manage his disability payments, told PIX11 News. "For her to dump the kids like that," he said, "It's surprising."
Adams's co-workers agree. Two fellow security guards at the HRA office told PIX11 News that they were surprised to hear about what Adams is accused of doing. One guard, who did not want to be identified, said that she simply feels that her friend snapped. The family of the father of Adams's children told PIX11 News that she dumped the kids on the sidewalk in front of his mother's home as part of a dispute she was having with him. He has not been seen since the Sunday afternoon incident.
Ironically, Adams is now in a holding cell in the basement of Brooklyn Criminal Court, awaiting her Tuesday morning arraignment -- one block from the building where she works. Another irony is that on her MySpace page she has albums of photos of herself with her daughters, whom she seems to adore and care well for. Her nickname on MySpace is "Lov3 M3 or Hat3 M3" (Love Me or Hate Me). At the location where she dumped her two toddlers, however, there is not a lot of love.
"It's bad," resident Eva Bonaparte told PIX11 News, while she held her 8-month-old daughter in an apartment overlooking the sidewalk where the girls were abandoned. "I'm looking at my daughter right now. What mother can do that?"
