WATERLOO - A Waterloo woman has been sentenced to probation for leaving her infant and toddler unattended while she went out of town to party with friends in June 2005.

Judge Bruce Zager sentenced Jacqueline Kaye Price, 23, to 10 years in prison suspended to two to five years probation after she pleaded to two counts each of neglect and child endangerment causing bodily injury.

Prosecutors had asked she be sent to prison. The judge turned down a defense request for deferred judgement that would have removed the charge from her record.

Price doesn't have a prior criminal record, and earlier this year authorities returned the children to Price, who gave birth another child while the case was pending.

She is currently receiving services.

In June 2005, Waterloo police officers acting on an anonymous tip found her daughters - at the time ages 4 months and 18 months - left alone in a basement on Dundee Avenue where she had been living.

The younger child was strapped in a car seat and was crying when police entered, and the older was sleeping on a futon couch in the basement littered with beer cans and trash, police said.

The two had flea bites and had oozing sores caused by untreated diaper rash, said Assistant Black Hawk County Attorney Linda Fangman.

They were taken to Allen Hospital, and Iowa Department of Human Services workers were contacted.

Police believe Price left the children at about 9 p.m. June 24, 2005, and went to Cedar Rapids.

Officers received the tip and discovered the children at about 2:10 a.m. June 25, 2005, records state.

Fangman said the door was unlocked, and officers were able to walk right in.

Police called her phone and finally reached her at 7:30 a.m., and she said she would return to Waterloo at about noon, records state.

Price said she left the children with a man who lived on the ground floor of the house, but prosecutors the man said he wasn't baby-sitting the children.

Contact Jeff Reinitz at (319) 291-1578 or jeff.reinitz@wcfcourier.com