An Ohio mother has been charged with murder after she allegedly left her 16-month-old daughter alone for more than a week while she vacationed.

Kristel Candelario, 31, reportedly told investigators she went to Puerto Rico and Detroit, leaving home on June 8 and returning on June 16, WKYC reported. When she did return home, she found her daughter Jailyn unresponsive.

Investigators said the little girl was “extremely dehydrated.”

The baby’s play bin was packed with “soiled blankets and a bottom liner, saturated with urine and feces.”

A neighbor told WOIO that the baby’s grandmother usually cared for the baby, not the mother.

“(The baby’s) mom always wanted to go out and just left her with her grandma and all that,” Suleym said.

Suleym and her mother Iris told WKYC that Candelario asked them to watch Jailyn for a weekend in August 2022, but did not return to get the baby for a month and a half. According to Iris, Candelario would make up excuses for why she was not coming to get the child. Candelario was gone so long that Jailyn began to refer to her neighbor-turned-caretaker as “mama”, she claimed.

Candelario was arraigned on Tuesday and given a $1 million bond. A pre-trial hearing is set for June 28.

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[Featured image: Kristel Candelario/Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office]