By Drew Harwell, Times Staff Writer
Monday, September 13, 2010
NEW PORT RICHEY — A woman left a 2-year-old child and a pit bull locked in a hot garage Sunday afternoon while she took prescription pills, police said.
New Port Richey police took a call reporting a disturbance between Linda Koberna and her daughter, Brittany Marzolf, at Bandura Avenue and Mengi Circle around 3 p.m. Koberna, 40, kept slurring her speech and nodding off, police said. She said she had left the child with a neighbor near her home on Ashmore Drive.
When officers went to that house, they heard the child crying from inside the garage. Officers said they unlocked the door and found the child sweating profusely. Nearby, a dog had been tied to a chair. Officers logged the temperature at 105 degrees.
Koberna was charged with child neglect and taken to the Land O'Lakes jail, where she remained Monday afternoon in lieu of $5,000 bail. She said she had taken five pills of oxycodone, Xanax and Soma that day, an arrest report shows.
Police would not release the gender of the child or the relationship to Koberna.
Koberna has been convicted of at least six drug charges and a hit-and-run accident within the last decade, records show.