Court Attorney Will Prosecute Shanesha Taylor for Child Endangerment

AZ Central - Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said Wednesday he will move forward with the felony child- abuse prosecution of Shanesha Taylor, the jobless mom whose Scottsdale arrest has drawn national attention and prompted calls for Taylor to receive assistance rather than punishment.




Shanesha Taylor's lawyer, Benjamin Taylor, said Tuesday at a news conference that he had scheduled an appointment with Montgomery for Friday, but Montgomery's spokesman, Jerry Cobb, said nothing had been confirmed.

On Tuesday, a Change.org petition with 12,000 names calling for Montgomery to drop the charges was delivered to his Phoenix office.

"First, they weren't signatures; they were just a list of names," Montgomery said, referring to a printout from the website. "So I don't know whether any of the individuals in their pajamas who logged on to the site and put their name on there really had a clue of all the circumstances involved in this particular case.

"The 'quote-unquote' letter addressed to me didn't mention any of the circumstances that presented those children with jeopardy."

He continued: "And a quick review of the pages themselves, there are roughly 30 signatures, or 30 names, listed on each page, and in some of these instances, we had to go 10 pages before we found someone who lived in Arizona, let alone in Maricopa County."

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