A Georgia mother is facing charges of reckless conduct after her ten-year-old son wandered away from her home while unattended. Brittany Patterson, 41, had taken her other son to the doctor on October 30, when Soren, who has since turned 11, left home and walked to downtown Mineral Bluff, which is less than a mile from their house, which sits on a 16-acre wooded property.
While at the doctor’s office, Patterson received a call from the Fannin County Sheriff’s Department, letting her know that Soren was found downtown and that deputies were driving him home.
“It turned out he’d walked just under a mile from our house in the woods where he’s homeschooled. The deputy wanted to know why he was there, how he got there, and why I didn’t know where he was,” Patterson told Business Insider. “I was annoyed with Soren for going into town without telling me or other family members first, but I wasn’t panicking. I told her that I knew the roads and that he was mature enough to walk there without incident.”
However, the deputy disagreed with her assessment of the situation.
“The deputy said it wasn’t safe because it was a dangerous road. She said all kinds of things could have happened, including being kidnapped.”
When Patterson got home, she spoke to Soren about what happened and “chastised him for leaving the house without telling us where he was going and how long he was going to be.”
A few hours later, deputies returned to her home and took Patterson into custody.
“It was anger and frustration, of course, because my children were having to witness that all,” she told NBC News. “They asked me to put my hands behind my back and all that stuff, and I realized what was going on.”
Officials told Patterson they would drop the charges if she signed a safety plan and guaranteed that her children would always be supervised by an adult. It also required her to download a tracking app onto her son’s phone so she could always track his location. Patterson refused to sign the form and vowed to fight the charges against her.
“My husband, Josh, works as a superintendent of schools in Montana. We were both raised with a lot of freedom and independence,” Patterson explained. “We’re free-range parents who want the same kind of life for our children. They’re allowed to go back into the woods and dig and build forts. They ride their dirt bikes or walk over to the neighbor’s house, where there’s a nice flat spot to play basketball.”
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