MacKenzie Elmer

melmer@dmreg.com

A Des Moines woman was arrested Wednesday after taking her 2-year-old to a bar and carrying a half-empty bottle of vodka in the child’s stroller.

Mary Jane Carpenter, 25, and her 2-year-old daughter showed up to Miss V’s Honky Tonk Island Bar on Hubbell Avenue at 3:23 p.m., according to a police report. She was intoxicated when she arrived and wore a bikini top and shorts, witnesses said.

Carpenter took a seat at the bar and let her child run about the bar and roll on the floor unsupervised. When the bartender tried to talk with Carpenter about her child, she slammed down her drink and started swearing.

She left the bar with her daughter, but a concerned male patron followed the two outside. Carpenter started to run down Hubbell Avenue, abandoning her child in a stroller near the intersection at East 18th Street and Grand Avenue. The man stayed with the stroller and police were called.

Carpenter was taken into custody and police found the clear plastic bottle half-full of vodka in the stroller. She blew a .183 on a preliminary breathalyzer test.

Officers put Carpenter's distraught child in the back of the police car to calm her, but Carpenter slipped out of her handcuffs. As officers tried to restrain Carpenter, she fought back, hitting her daughter and also an officer in the face during the process.

Police took Carpenter to the ground to restrain her and transported her to the Polk County Jail. Carpenter is charged with child endangerment-no injury, assault on police officers and consumption.