by Jennifer Pritchett
Northern News Services

NNSL (Feb 26/97) - RCMP were called to a downtown apartment at 3 a.m. Tuesday to find the parents of a handful of young children home alone.

Police walked into the apartment only to find a baby left unattended, lying on a mattress in the living room, said Staff Sgt. Dave Grundy.

They discovered several other adults in the apartment's bedrooms.

But they later found four more children in a downstairs apartment with no adult supervision whatsoever. The children -- ranging in age from four to 13 -- were left by their mother before supper the previous evening, more than nine hours earlier, said Grundy.

"It appears that there were two sets of parents who paid for a babysitter," he said.

But the babysitter was nowhere to be found at 3 a.m., when police arrived.

Finding abandoned children isn't unusual, said Grundy. "This is a real common occurrence here in town," he said.

It's always young children who are at the age where it's unclear as to whether they should be left home alone or not, he said.