The Texas woman featured in a viral video abandoning her friend’s child on a stranger’s doorstep and then running to her car, is now breaking her silence.
“Everything blew out of proportion,” Keairra Woods told Inside Edition Monday. “I’m getting blamed for everything.”
Woods says she was doing the toddler’s mother a favor when she dropped Royal Simmons off at his dad’s house, but the child’s mother gave her the wrong address. Yet even if that was the case, many still took issue with the way she left the scene before the minor was safely left with an adult.
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According to Montgomery County Sheriff’s Lt. Scott Spencer, the 20-year-old’s behavior constitutes neglect and a child endangerment investigation was launched after the footage sparked public backlash.
But Woods says “it wasn’t like” she dropped the boy off at a random address and she only ran off when she saw a woman — who she assumed to be the boy’s stepmother – coming to the door.
“I could see her through the glass window,” Woods recalls. “I’m pretty sure she could see me standing there too.”
However, because the child’s parents have a strained relationship, she scurried to her car to avoid interacting with the woman.
“She said, ‘Leave him on the porch.’ I said, ‘Are you sure you want me to leave your child on the porch?’ She said, ‘Yes!’ ” she claims.
“I didn’t stay at the door because I seen her coming halfway to the door.”
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A follow up video released by the sheriff’s department shows the young woman forcefully dragging the boy by his arm from her car, but she maintains she wasn’t being abusive.
“I was trying to carry him and carry his bags,” she defends. “It wasn’t intentionally on purpose, like, ‘Let me drag him up here.’ No, I would never do that.”
The boy was temporarily placed with Child Protective Services in Houston, and although he is now back with his family and his mother has forgiven Woods, his father is still irate about the incident.
“I am angry! I am upset! Every time I watch the video I get more and more madder,” he told Inside Edition.
Although the optics may be alarming, Woods wants the viewing public to know she isn’t a bad person.
“Everybody looking at me like I’m the bad person, I was only helping my friend out by doing her a favor,” she concluded.