Kid found on street alone
Parents arrested
A shoeless, shivering toddler was found wandering the streets of Brooklyn alone yesterday — leading cops to haul his parents away in handcuffs.
The coatless, brown-haired boy was spotted shortly before 1 p.m. near Avenue J in Midwood with nothing on his feet but a pair of socks.
The stunned 2-year-old, whose name wasn’t released, put on a brave face for the nearby residents who found him.
“We gave him my son’s slippers and a coat,” said Yafa Shalom, a neighborhood resident.
“He was really freezing,” said Shalom who gave comfort to the shivering child in the 30-degree weather after cops brought him to her door while canvassing the area for his parents.
The tot’s mom, Shazia Nafir, 39, and dad, Khalifa, were later charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child.
Cops could not say exactly how the boy — who was found about a block from his home — came to be lost.
Although the toddler was found at 1 p.m., the Nafirs noticed he was missing only at around 3 p.m. and called 911, cops said.
The panicked parents told cops they thought their son was with relatives who live next door to them on East 12th Street. “I tried to talk to him but the child was petrified, he would not talk,” Shalom told The Post.
Shalom suspected the tot may not “understand or speak English. You could also see he was really afraid.”
The little boy finally broke down in tears as he entered an ambulance that took him to Coney Island Hospital.
The boy could not communicate with hospital workers, who were trying to determine what language he spoke, police said.
The child was examined, released from the hospital and taken to the 70th Precinct station house.
Neither parent has a criminal record. They declined comment while leaving the station house.
They also have an older son and daughter, whose ages weren’t released. A spokesman for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services said the agency was investigating the incident.
The three children would be cared for by relatives, sources said.
“I wanted him to stay here, but the cops wouldn’t let him,” Shalom said.
In January, Dalisha Adams was charged with child endangerment after his 2- and 3-year-old daughters were found alone on a Brooklyn sidewalk.
Adams, 26, said she had left her kids with their grandmother.
But the grandmother, Betha Davis, denied to The Post that Adams ever left the girls with her.
Additional reporting by Annie Karni and Tim Perone