No charges for mom who abandoned daughter

An Illinois mother will not face charges for allegedly abandoning her disabled 19-year-old daughter at a bar in Tennessee, officials said. A Tennessee grand jury decided Monday that Eva Cameron, 45, will not be charged with willful neglect and exploitation of an impaired adult, the Chicago Tribune reported. Cameron allegedly drove her daughter, whose name was not released, to Tennessee because she did not believe she was receiving adequate care or housing in Illinois. The teen, who functions at the intellectual level of a 3-year-old, was found at a rural bar in Caryville on June 28 without an ID or money. Cameron had returned to Illinois. Tennessee officials originally decided not to charge Cameron because her daughter is legally an adult, but after learning the circumstances of the case, called for further investigation. Cameron returned to Tennessee on July 10 and signed a statement saying she did not want to take her daughter back to Illinois. "There is no disagreement that the actions of the mother, Eva Cameron, in this case were inexcusable," said a news release issued Monday by Lori Phillips-Jones, district attorney general. "However, Tennessee law has not anticipated such behavior and thus the grand jury was faced with conduct which was not necessarily indictable." The teenager has since been transported back to Illinois and has been living in a group home, officials said. Caryville police and caseworkers "went above and beyond the call of duty to care for this young lady to ensure that she suffered no harm during the short time frame between her discovery and the subsequent intervening actions from the state of Illinois which placed her in an appropriate facility in her home state," the news release states.