Two year old girl left to fend for self while teacher parents went drinking

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http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120907-0000125/UK-girl,-2,-abandoned-by-drunken-teacher-parents

A two-year-old British toddler has been taken into care in Portugal after being abandoned in the street while her teacher parents got drunk in a bar.

Officer Rui Vasconcelos, one of the girl's rescuers, said: "witnesses said the couple were sitting on the promenade from 4.30pm. It was 7.30pm when we arrived and we found the man drunk. The woman could not even get up from the table."

"The girl was playing on her own right next to a dangerous busy road," a police spokesman said.

"Passers-by were obviously concerned for her safety. They called the police, and when we arrived she was crying in her buggy and was obviously hungry and thirsty."

Officers gave the child food and drink while they tracked down her parents.

"They were clearly very drunk and officers tried to speak to them in several languages but they refused to acknowledge the officers," the spokesman added.

"Later they became very abusive. They showed absolutely no concern for her welfare so she was taken into care," the spokesman said.

The girl spent the night at an emergency centre for children and was believed still to be there yesterday, having been found on Monday. A court will decide whether she is returned to her parents.

Her parents are middle-class teachers aged 40 and 38 on holiday from Britain, according to the Portuguese daily Diario de Noticias, although another newspaper said that they lived in Carcavelos and worked as teachers in Lisbon.