A state judge has ordered a mental evaluation for a 24-year-old woman charged with abandoning her three young children at the Honolulu Airport on Sunday. Court orders mental
exam for mother
Star-Bulletin staff
Nikki Cliff-Velazquez was scheduled to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty yesterday to three counts of child abandonment. But Honolulu District Court Judge Darryl Choy postponed the arraignment yesterday pending the outcome of a Nov. 21 court hearing to determine whether Cliff-Velazquez is mentally fit to proceed.
Choy also ordered Cliff-Velazquez held without bail. She had been in custody since her arrest Sunday, unable to post $300 bail. Child abandonment is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison.
Cliff-Velazquez told her children, two boys and a girl between 4 and 8, they were going to visit their grandmother in New York and left them at the airport about 8:30 a.m. Sunday, said Marilyn Kali, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman.
Police were notified after a security guard spotted the children wandering in the airport. Cliff-Velazquez was arrested at the 7-Eleven Pearl City store at 11:15 a.m. The children were turned over to Child Protective Services, Kali said.
The children are military dependents whose father is in the Army believed to be stationed in Germany, Kali said. Cliff-Velazquez lists a Makakilo address.
