Austin police have accused a woman of leaving her 2-year-old twins unsupervised at a hotel in Northwest Austin while she shot heroin in July, according to an arrest affidavit filed Wednesday.

Austin Police Department

AMERICAN-STATESMAN file photo/Jessalyn Tamez

The document said Dena Praesel, 43, faces a charge of child endangerment, but jail records indicated she was not in custody at the Travis County Jail on Wednesday morning.

Police responded to an Extended Stay America hotel in the 12400 block of Research Boulevard on July 6 after receiving reports that two toddlers were walking around the hotel unsupervised for about an hour.

When officers found the children, both of their diapers were full of urine and feces and were falling off, the affidavit said.

Police said the kids were too young to tell officers who their parents were or where they were staying, so officers began knocking on doors.

A guest tipped off investigators about a room where the parents might be, but when police knocked on the room door, no one responded. Police entered the room and found Praesel unconscious on the bed, the affidavit said.

An officer shook Praesel to wake her up, the affidavit said, and he asked if she was missing any children.

"The female quickly responded that she was, in fact, missing her ‘twin toddlers,’ " the document said.

While police spoke to Praesel, officers said they spotted a hypodermic syringe filled with brown liquid on the floor next to children’s toys.

"(The officer’s) attention was drawn to the loaded syringe because Praesel attempted to step on the syringe when she got off the bed," the affidavit said.

A lab report completed in November confirmed that the syringe was loaded with 0.4 gram of heroin.

Surveillance footage from the hotel showed that the children exited the room by themselves, walked down a flight of stairs and remained unsupervised for about an hour, according to the affidavit.

"During this time, the victims were exposed to, accessing and potentially being injected by a hypodermic needle, which contained the narcotic heroin," the affidavit said. "In addition, the Extended Stay America hotel is located on the northbound frontage of North Highway 183, a highly congested roadway which placed the victims at risk of being hit by a motor vehicle.

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