Adorable Anna Krentcil, at home yesterday, was sunburned when her mom allegedly took her to a tanning salon. (Christopher Sadowski)
She’s taken tanning too far – even for New Jersey.
Tanorexic mom of five Patricia Krentcil – whose ghastly boot-leather skin makes Snooki look like a ghost – was busted for allegedly taking her 5-year-old daughter into a stand-up tanning booth.
Krentcil let little kindergartner Anna get so roasted at her local salon that school officials noticed a sunburn on the child and called the authorities. The mom was hauled into a Newark court yesterday on charges of felony child endangerment — although she insisted she didn’t bring Anna inside the booth for a little “Jersey Shore”-style tanning action.
“Never in my life would I endanger my child by putting her in a tanning booth. I’m not dumb,” Krentcil, 44, of Nutley, said yesterday, after pleading not guilty to charges that could get her 10 years in prison. She was freed on $25,000 bail and retains custody of her kid.
Officials said that a school nurse noticed the first-degree sunburns on Anna on April 24. That’s when the girl blabbed that her mom had brought her to the salon.
Krentcil, however, claims that Anna, who has fair skin and red hair, got the sunburn while playing outside.
She says Anna was confused when she told school officials about the salon.
The girl was just accompanying Krentcil, she says, claiming the school is blowing it out of proportion.
“It’s all made up,” she said.
Krentcil is such a tanatic that she visits the City Tropic Tanning salon on Centre Street in Nutley roughly 20 times a month, workers there told The Post.
She has a $99 monthly pass — and has used that plan to char herself to a ghastly mahogany tint for the past three years.
“She’s totally innocent. Whatever they say happened didn’t happen,” Krentcil’s hubby, Rich, told The Post.
He then went on to deny she had severe tanorexia.
“She likes to tan, but I wouldn’t say she has a problem,” he said.
“She is tan. She enjoys doing it for herself and she enjoys tanning. It’s her business, pretty much. It’s not illegal to tan. People drink and smoke, and it’s not illegal.”
Even so, Krentcil will have to find a new enabler — the salon owner yesterday banned her for life.
“I don’t want her here anymore and deal with this nonsense,” said the owner, who would give his name only as Anthony.
Nevertheless, he backed her defense.
“The girl did not go in the booth,” Anthony said.
“The girl had sunburn on her arms from April 17; it was 90 degrees out.
“She’s a 5-year-old kid, she’d burn to death if she went into one of those booths. I have seven kids of my own. I wouldn’t let a girl in there.”
He also said that images of Krentcil appearing on television with a gruesome tan were probably due to spray tan — not from his tanning beds.
“The way she looks now, it’s not from here, she added some kind of spray to her face,” he said.
Krentcil was quickly becoming a laughingstock.
“As crazy as she looks, you think she would put her daughter in the booth — to take time away from herself?” joked John D., who was picking his high-school age daughter up from the salon.
Additional reporting by Anna Spiewak, Joe Mollica
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