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Indiana parents arrested after diaper-clad toddlers found in rain, along train tracks

MUNCIE, Ind. – The parents of two Muncie toddlers were arrested Monday after a passerby found the children, unattended and clad only in diapers, playing in a rainstorm along railroad tracks.

The boys, ages 1 and 2, were “covered in dirt and both had dirty diapers,” a city police officer reported.

The officer was sent to the area of Lincoln and Adams streets about 5:40 p.m. after dispatchers received a report of “two juveniles running around on the train tracks in the rain.”

When he arrived in the area, a motorist began honking his horn and told the officer he had placed the children in his vehicle after seeing them “in the pouring rain along the train tracks.”

He said a train had recently passed through the area.

The youngsters, described by the officer as having “a large amount of energy,” were taken to City Hall, appeared “hungry and thirsty” and were given meals from McDonald’s, an affidavit said.

They were released to the custody of a Department of Child Services official, and apparently placed in foster care.

Shortly before 8 p.m. – “two hours and 16 minutes after we located the juveniles," the officer wrote – the boys’ mother, Taylor Nicole Shively, 22, of the 200 block of North Macedonia Avenue, called dispatchers to report she “could not locate her two children.”

Shively’s mother later told investigators it was “the fourth time she is aware of that the children had gotten out of the house because (their parents) do not watch them."

Shively told police she “is on new medication and she fell asleep for a long time so the children were able to get out,” the document said.

She and her husband, 28-year-old Brady Ray Shively, who was also the target of an unrelated warrant, were arrested on neglect-of-a-dependent charges.

Brady Shively, formerly of Anderson, faces a total of four charges in two cases pending in Muncie City Court – driving while intoxicated, driving with a controlled substance in system and two counts of driving while suspended.

Shively – being held without bond in the Delaware County jail on Tuesday – was convicted of domestic battery committed in the presence of a child last November in Delaware Circuit Court 1.

His wife, who was being held under a $5,000 bond, was convicted of theft in 2015.

The parents allegedly told an officer that a drug screen conducted by a CPS official would "find marijuana."

Follow Douglas Walker on Twitter: @DouglasWalkerSP