Army Arrests Single Mom Who Won't Deploy

A single mom faces potential criminal charges after she skipped her deployment to Afghanistan to care for her 10-month-old son. Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, an Army cook, says she couldn’t find anyone to care for the boy, and that when she told her superiors of her dilemma, they said she’d have to put the child in foster care. “For her it was like, ‘I couldn’t abandon my child,’” Hutchinson’s attorney tells the AP.

Hutchinson is currently under arrest and confined to base in Savannah, Ga., but charges haven’t been filed yet. Her mother came and took the boy to her California home. An Army spokesman says commanders are investigating the incident, and that the Army wouldn’t force a single parent to give up his or her child. “If she would have come to the deployment terminal with her child, there’s no question she would not have been deployed.” (More Alexis Hutchinson stories.)