RICHMOND, Ky. (WKYT) - Police say she put her children in danger. Now neighbors are defending a single mother's decision to leave those children on their own when she went to work. Richmond police charged Loucinda Marshall with endangering the welfare of minors, one 11-year-old and one 5-year-old.

WKYT talked with a neighbor standing up for the single mom.

"She's always took care of her kids. She works what she can to bring in what she can because she don't have no help with them," explained Kenna Agee, who's known Loucinda Marshall for about four years. The friends live in the same neighborhood. Their children often play together. Agee says Marshall almost always has someone looking after her kids when she heads to work.

"She takes them to her grandparents because her grandparents live right down the road from where she's working, but they wasn't able to watch them that day."

Agee is referring to this past weekend, when Richmond police got a call that Marshall left the kids alone. They went into the home and found an 11-year-old and 5-year-old alone. They say the rooms were in disarray and there was little food there for them.

"She has no child support, no help, no nothing. It's just her and two little kids," noted Agee, "I see how she struggles to get them to daycare, to school, her car's been tore up, trying to get her car fixed that way she can do - because she's called me many a time to ask if I can help her pick them up at daycare and bring them home."

Police say a social service worker ordered the children into the custody of a responsible relative.

Marshall will appear in court to answer to the endangerment of children charges.