The 4-year-old girl, in her pink coat and leggings, had been sitting in the Silverado truck outside the Horseshoe Casino Baltimore for nearly seven hours on Thanksgiving night before two customers spotted her.

It was 4:48 in the morning, the temperature had dropped into the mid-40s, and security officers decided they needed to break into the truck.

Police took the cold, hungry, shoeless girl to a hospital for an examination and a bowl of cereal. Casino security officers set out to find her mother.

Guerra Perez was playing a slot machine, the officers reported.

Handcuffed and charged with neglect on that November 2015 morning, the 22-year-old became another in a string of Marylanders accused of abandoning a child while gambling at a casino

As opportunities to gamble in Maryland have expanded, so has a problem associated with casinos everywhere: the neglect and abandonment of children and other vulnerable people. With the opening of the state's sixth casino in December — the giant MGM National Harbor in Prince George's County — Maryland is among the country's most saturated gambling markets.

As school systems face deficits, some ask: "What happened to the casino money?" (Baltimore Sun video) As school systems face deficits, some ask: "What happened to the casino money?" (Baltimore Sun video)

The recurring cases in which kids — and, in 2014, a 98-year-old woman — have been left alone in cars while their guardians gamble present a dark contrast to the bright lights of casino floors. The cases also illustrate the challenge the state faces to contain problems associated with lucrative gambling operations.

State Del. Nick Mosby is sponsoring legislation to boost funding to treat problem gamblers. The state currently charges casinos annual fees of $425 per slot machine and $500 per table game to support responsible gambling programs — assessments that generated more than $3.8 million in the most recent fiscal year.

This is a collection of mug shots released to The Baltimore Sun during the reporting of recent news stories.

"We know we are currently underfunded, especially when you see the expansion of gambling in Maryland," the Baltimore Democrat said.

Fourteen children were abandoned outside the state's casinos during the last two calendar years, according to Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency records obtained by The Baltimore Sun under the Public Information Act.

In September 2015, two children — ages 9 and 10 — abandoned in a car at Horseshoe told a security officer "that their father had entered the casino saying that he was going to get some money that the casino owed him," gaming regulators reported. The father, who was playing craps, was arrested and charged with child endangerment.

Two months later, a 2-year-old was left in a car at Horseshoe while his uncle played blackjack. The child was discovered by two casino patrons.

At Western Maryland's Rocky Gap Casino in 2015, a security supervisor found three children — all under 9 — "who appeared to be upset and advised that they can't find their parents," regulators reported. When they were spotted by casino patrons, the kids had left the car and were standing alone in the parking lot.

In October, a worker at Bobby's Burger Palace at Maryland Live in Hanover told security a mother had left a 7-year-old girl in the restaurant for a brief period while she gambled, according to regulators. Maryland Live banned the woman for seven days.

The safety awareness group Kids and Cars has chronicled more than 300 cases of child abandonment at casinos nationwide since 2000. Organization founder Janette Fennell said the count was "at best the tip of the iceberg," because "we only find out when it is covered by the media." No Maryland cases were reported in the first two months of this year.

It's more common, she says, that drivers unintentionally leave their kids in cars as they go to work, shop for groceries or run errands. That has happened tens of thousands of times, she says. An average of 37 such kids annually die of heatstroke.

Fennell sees a big difference between forgetting your toddler in the backseat — a lapse that has been committed by "some of the best parents you would ever want to meet" — and abandoning him or her at a casino.

Abandonment at a casino is more likely to be deliberate — Maryland doesn't allow people under 21 on the gaming floor — and Fennell believes prosecutors should seek penalties "every time a child is knowingly left in a vehicle."

It is against Maryland law to leave a child under 8 confined in a building or car without someone who is at least 13 to supervise.

Fennell said she is pushing for technology to alert drivers as they leave their cars if a passenger remains in the backseat. She also favors child care in casinos — a smattering of casinos nationally, including the large Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, already offer it.

The American Gaming Association, a casino industry group, said it has no position on casino child care. The group has partnered with Kids and Cars to raise awareness of kids left in cars.

"Whether it's at a grocery store, a theme park, a shopping mall or a casino, we all want to prevent these situations from occurring.," said Sara Slane, the association's senior vice president of public affairs.

Casinos can be mesmerizing environments in which it is easy to lose track of time. Often, they do not display clocks. Some players imagine they will stay for a short period, only to find that hours have slipped away.

'It's a pretty common consequence of gambling addiction that you become so preoccupied that you lose track of time, so the kid stays in the car," said Keith Whyte, executive director of the The National Council on Problem Gambling. "They create an immersive environment where there is not a lot of outside stimuli."

On the night Perez left her child in the Horsehoe parking garage, she returned to the car twice — once for nine minutes and once for a few hours, surveillance video showed.

It's uncertain whether she was checking up on the girl, and her attorney said she could not shed light on the matter.

"This is a really young lady who went to the casino with other adults and she made a bad decision that night," said Elizabeth Lawrence, Perez's attorney. "She's been very remorseful. She is not somebody who goes to the casino frequently."

Horseshoe officials declined comment.

Perez was held briefly at Baltimore City Detention Center while Child Protective Services took custody of her daughter for a time, according to District Court records. A man and a woman who had accompanied her to the casino were not charged but were issued eviction notices by the casino, state compliance officials reported.

Child Protective Services would not discuss Perez's case. Spokeswoman Katherine Morris said agency workers generally "do not want to remove children from their parents and will try to keep children at home whenever that is possible."