SMITH COUNTY, Texas — Kelsey Frazier is a popular name in the Smith County childcare community.
The 27-year-old single mom was not only a babysitter, but lactation consultant who is actively involved in church groups and childcare Facebook groups.
“She is recommended by a lot of very credible people,” Aaron Manley-Smith said.
On social media, Frazier comes across as a doting mother to her young son. However, it’s something many are now questioning after she was arrested on Oct. 9 for child abandonment and endangerment.
According to the Smith County Sheriff’s Office, Frazier left her home early in the morning on Oct. 3, leaving an 11-month-old strapped to a baby bouncer in the bathroom closet at her garage apartment in Chapel Hill. A family friend went inside to check on a dog around noon and discovered the little girl crying alone.
Manley-Smith, who’s friends with the Duffey’s, said the family was in disbelief when they heard what Frazier had done.
“My understanding was the police are not contacted until after their child was picked up and brought home because we were talking to them prior to them calling the police,” he explained. “The story, Kelsey produced that there was this girl named Vanessa that she left the daughter with while she was out doing whatever.”
After Frazier’s arrest three days later, Manley-Smith made a Facebook post to share what the prominent sitter had done. The post has been shared over 2,500 times and has more than 500 comments with other parents like Lydia Ball sharing their own incidents with Frazier.
Ball hired Frazier to watch her 2-year-old son when she first moved to Tyler in 2018.
“I kind of scoped out everything on Facebook, she just, it all looked good,” she said. “I think she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
After a brief meeting, Frazier and Ball made plans for the boy, which included a packed lunch and where pickups and drop offs would take place.
“We had arranged to met at the Dairy Queen at the corner of Chapel Hill,” Ball said. “She had told me, ‘I am going through a divorce, I moved back in with my parents and I'm only going to be there for a week.’”
Ball never saw the house, but after seeing a video of where the baby was found on Oct. 3, she feels that’s where her son was also being watched.
After two weeks, she had some concerns about Frazier’s care of her child after never picking him up from the same place, and receiving different excuses about why Frazier couldn’t send videos or pictures of him.
“I would open his bag to put a new lunch in the next day, and his lunch will still be in there,” Ball said.
“Another thing that was alarming, was he would be in the same diaper he was in when I dropped him off. For nine hours, he would be in the same soiled diaper,” she said.
Ball says she wanted to give who she thought was a newly single mom the benefit of the doubt. Plus, she was worried if she said something to the sitter, she would lose her childcare and potentially her job.
“There's no signs of abuse,” Ball said. "So I thought, 'OK I'm overthinking, I'm being too paranoid, she's a mom, she knows what she's doing.'"
Ball did bring up a safety concern to Frazier after finding her son’s car seat unbuckled in the sitter's car. She says that's when Frazier told her to find new child care.
"At that point, she said, ‘oh well he bit my son today, I’m not watching him anymore,'" Ball said.
It was after seeing Manley-Smith’s post with Frazier’s mugshot that Ball felt she had to speak up, to share what happened wasn’t an isolated incident.
She has spoken with the Smith County Sheriff’s Office about Frazier’s treatment of her son to help with their investigation.
“Now, what happens beyond that is going to be up to the DA [district attorney],” Ball said. “It doesn't mean that it's going to get added on to her sentence or, but I'm hoping that more people could come forward. This is an ongoing problem."