DCF Aide is Found Drunk, Cops Say
She was drunk in car with baby in back seat, Gables police say
By Carol Marbin Miller
Originally published in The Miami Herald, July 27, 2002
A Department of Children & Families caseworker was charged with drunk driving and felony child neglect Thursday after Coral Gables police found her slumped over in her parked car—with a 7-month-old foster child crying in the back seat.
Mirla Pronga's 1995 Toyota Corolla was stopped in the middle of Biltmore Drive at 9:30 p.m., with its engine running, when police arrived. Police said they found Pronga, 56, apparently asleep in the driver's seat. They found an open bottle of Bacardi rum next to her.
"The child was visibly upset. She was crying," said Sgt. Raul Pedroso, a police spokesman. "There was a [baby] bottle in the car that was in the rear passenger seat, but obviously out of reach of the child.
"We don't know how long this baby was without food or drink but the baby was upset and crying," Pedroso added.
DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney, who has been the subject of withering scrutiny since police in April announced the disappearance of a 5-year-old Miami-Dade County child in foster care, said late Friday that Pronga had been fired "for behavior that endangered a child."
"We are thankful that, through the quick actions of the foster mother and law enforcement, that the child was found safe and unharmed," Kearney said in a statement. She praised the DCF's Miami administrator, Charles Auslander, for taking "swift and decisive action" in firing the caseworker.
Pronga, of Hialeah, remained in jail Friday night. Bond was set at $12,500.
The caseworker picked up the girl from her foster home in the Kendall area at 1:30 p.m. for a scheduled supervised visit with the girl's biological family in Opa-locka. Auslander said the child's mother failed to show up for the visit.
Apart from an hourlong stop she made with the child at a DCF building late in the afternoon, officials do not know where Pronga was until her arrest.
BABY NOT RETURNED
The foster parents called Miami-Dade police at 8:25 p.m. to report that Pronga had failed to return the baby.
When police arrived at Biltmore Drive at about 9:30 p.m., Pronga was sleeping so soundly behind the wheel that officers could not rouse her by "knocking on the window loudly and screaming," a police report states. An officer opened the driver's side door, and detected "a distinct odor of an alcoholic beverage."
The officer woke Pronga and helped her out of the car. She couldn't stand without leaning on the car, the officer wrote. Pronga was arrested, though she declined to take a Breathalyzer exam. Florida law calls for automatic suspension of a driver's license if the Breathalyzer is refused.
CHILD EXAMINED
The infant girl, who was not named by police or child welfare officials, was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Child Protection Team for a physical evaluation, Auslander said. The team examines children suspected to be the victims of abuse or neglect.
"She was determined to be healthy, and she was returned last night to the home where she was previously placed," Auslander said. "There appear to be no health concerns arising out of this very, very unfortunate incident."
Records show Thursday's incident was not Pronga's first DUI charge. In 1993, Pronga was charged with driving under the influence in Broward County.
Records show she was found guilty of the offense and her license was revoked for six months.
DCF administrators in Miami were not aware of the conviction until after her Thursday arrest, Auslander said. DCF personnel administrators told Auslander they do not believe Pronga had any duty to report the arrest, or conviction, to her supervisors.
Auslander, who performed a cursory review of Pronga's 11 years with the department, said he was told that Pronga's job performance evaluations were generally "pretty good." Auslander said he was unaware whether Pronga had ever been disciplined by the department.
Kearney and her troubled agency have been nationally pilloried for the disappearance of Rilya Wilson, a foster child in DCF care. Her caretakers said a woman claiming to be a DCF worker took Rilya in January 2001 for an evaluation and never returned her. The agency said it had no record of such a visit. However, the caretakers showed signs of deception in lie-detector tests, police said in May.
Administrators did not discover that Rilya was missing until 15 months had passed, and only after her case was assigned to a new worker.
Rilya's former caseworker resigned in March as she was about to be fired for falsifying records in another case.
Since then, the department has been plagued by a spate of deaths involving children whose welfare had been investigated by caseworkers. One of the children was Alfredo Montes, a 2-year-old Winter Haven boy who was killed earlier this month, allegedly by his baby sitter, for soiling his pants.
NEW LAW USED
The baby's DCF caseworker was charged, under a state law enacted after Rilya's disappearance, with falsifying records that said she had checked on the child's welfare the same day he was beaten to death.
Karen Gievers, a Tallahassee attorney who filed a federal class-action lawsuit to force improvements in the state's foster-care system, said children remain unsafe in the DCF's custody.
"The department has to take kids into protective custody from their own caseworkers," she said Friday.
