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December 25, 2003, 4:34 PM EST


Police called it child endangerment. The parents called it a medical emergency.

The process of sorting out the truth will begin Monday when a couple from England is scheduled to be arraigned on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child after police said they left their 6-month-old daughter in a locked vehicle Tuesday at Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream.

Goldie and Yisroel Singer, 25 and 26 respectively, of London, were released on an appearance ticket for arraignment in First District Court in Hempstead on the misdemeanor charge.

Nassau Police Officers Jack Volpe and Roy McComb said passers-by flagged them down near Wal-Mart in the mall parking lot about 4:45 p.m. after noticing a baby girl alone in a child restraint seat in the back of the car.

Volpe and McComb checked the registration of the car and paged the owners inside the nearby Wal-Mart store without finding the Singers. When the couple returned to the vehicle about 10 minutes later with their two other small children, they were arrested, police said.

The Singers' lawyer, Meir Moza of Mineola, said his clients were not negligent but were the victims of a cultural misunderstanding.

"This is not a situation where they went to do their shopping," he said. "There was a medical emergency."

Moza said the Singers were visiting New York for the holidays, staying with relatives in Brookyn, and were scheduled to fly home next Wednesday.

He said their oldest daughter, 3-year-old Rachel, had recently had a bladder infection and "the doctor said when she has to go to the bathroom, she has to go immediately. She was crying and said she had to go to the bathroom and the other girl [2-year-old Haya] was crying. So they made a decision to take them to the bathroom in Wholesale Liquidators.

"They didn't realize it was such a long walk," Moza continued. "The mother couldn't take care of both of the girls so both parents went. Rosie was asleep. She locked the doors and left the window open a little. He thought it would take a minute. He was only gone for 5 or 7 minutes."

Moza said "they are good people from a good background. But they have a different mentality in Europe." He said parents in England often leave their children in cars for brief periods and no one would have called the police. "But they understand that there was a mistake in judgment," he said.

The Singers' case echoed the 1997 arrest in Manhattan of a Danish woman and her husband from Brooklyn who were charged with child endangerment after they left their 14-month-old daughter outside an East Village restaurant while they dined inside. The incident caused an uproar in Denmark, where many people pointed out that parents often leave their children outside restaurants but within view to spare the infants the noise and smoke inside an eatery.