Police arrested 20-year-old Frankea Dabbs on abandonment charges after she purposely left her seven-month-old daughter in her stroller on a subway platform at Columbus Circle Monday. Dabbs was spotted on the Upper West Side around midnight Tuesday by someone who recognized her from security footage released by police.

Dabbs told police that she is a homeless widow, and had arrived in New York from North Carolina July 2.

"She felt she couldn't take care of the baby and thought she was leaving her in a safe public space," Stephen Davis, spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. And according to the Associated Press, Dabbs had recently skipped a court date and faces a number of charges:

Records show that Dabbs has a pending assault case and numerous prostitution-related arrests, all misdemeanors, in Raleigh, Charlotte and other locations in North Carolina. She had skipped a court date for one of the cases on July 1, according to the Wake County District Attorney's office.

Dabbs' father, Fraknie, told WRAL in Raleigh, NC, that he was "blown away" by the news of his daughter, who said she had left the state unannounced.

"I think it's because she had a tragic past. She saw her boyfriend get murdered—the baby's daddy—and I think it, maybe, escalated from there," Frankie Dabbs said. "She was holding all of that in."

Her daughter, Mylanea Love Edmund, remains in the custody of New York's Administration for Children's Services

[Image via NYPD]