Spring Hill child-neglect case deepens after caretaker found sex offender

Two small children were found wandering alone in a Spring Hill street while an adult inside the home said he was watching them. By the time Hernando County deputies arrived on June 6, the toddlers were wearing only diapers, and neighbors said they had been outside and unsupervised long enough for one resident to try repeatedly to get someone inside the house to answer.

Deputies later identified the caretaker as 45-year-old Jim Charles Whitmarsh Jr. He told investigators the children’s parents were away running errands and that he had been in a bedroom playing video games with a third juvenile. The children’s mother, Brittany Hanks, later said she and her husband, Jarodney Thomas, had left the children in Whitmarsh’s care while they went to the grocery store and handled other errands. The affidavit says Whitmarsh is Hanks’ uncle. Neighbors estimated the children had been left without supervision for about 45 minutes.

What began as a neglect call became far more serious once deputies connected Whitmarsh to a criminal history involving minors. He was charged with two counts of child neglect without injury, and the arresting deputy asked that bond be denied because of his prior convictions. R News reported that Whitmarsh has a 2002 conviction for lewd and lascivious conduct involving a child under 16 and a 2006 conviction for unlawful sexual activity with a minor between 16 and 17. Those convictions made him a permanent sexual offender under Florida law, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s public offender system lists him as a sexual offender.

The case raises hard questions about who was trusted with these children and whether any warning signs were missed before the adults walked out the door. Florida law treats child neglect without bodily harm as a felony, and the consequences are especially grave when the caregiver already carries a record involving minors. Hernando County Sheriff’s Office registration services are handled at 18900 Cortez Boulevard in Brooksville, and the agency also offers public records and community-alert tools for residents trying to keep track of offenders in the county.

The Spring Hill case also fits into a larger local pattern of very young children ending up in public spaces without adequate supervision. In a separate Hernando County case on Aug. 31, 2025, deputies treated a 4-year-old found wandering a Spring Hill hotel lobby for about 25 minutes as a child-neglect matter. Together, the cases show how quickly a lapse in informal childcare can become a public-safety failure with lasting consequences.