Friday, April 16, 2004 | 10:59 a.m.
A Jeep Grand Cherokee was stolen this morning with an unattended 1-year-old inside, but the thief abandoned the car minutes later, Metro Police said. The child was unharmed.
This is the second case of a child being left in a car in less than a day.
Thursday night Henderson Police arrested a mother for leaving her daughter locked in a car while she shopped at Costco.
This morning a parent left a child in the gray Jeep at Terrible Herbst on Decatur Boulevard near U.S. 95 about 9:30 a.m. Moments later the car was stolen.
The vehicle was found a short time later in the parking lot of Fasolini's Pizza Cafe at 222 S. Decatur Blvd., just blocks away, and the baby was found safe, police said. Police were investigating this morning and had few details.
In the incident Thursday night, Henderson resident Maria Guadalupe Avila, 28, was charged with child endangerment, a gross misdemeanor, after leaving her 2-year-old daughter unattended in a car, said Officer Shane Lewis, a Henderson Police spokesman.
Employees of the Costco at 791 Marks St. heard a child crying about 7 p.m. and noticed the toddler in the car. She had been alone for about 20 minutes.
"One of the windows was down enough for them to unlock the door," Lewis said. "If they could do that, anyone could do that."
The child was uninjured. Police called her father and he took her home.
Avila was booked into the Henderson Detention Center and was released after posting $2,500 bail. She is scheduled to appear in court at 9 a.m. May 6.
This is the first case this year in Henderson in which a parent was arrested after being accused of leaving a child unattended in a car.
Further statistics for Henderson were not available this morning, but Metro Police handled 56 such cases last year in Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County between April 1, when Metro started counting, and Dec. 31, 2003.
There is no law in Nevada that specifically states that leaving in a child in an unattended vehicle, in and of itself, constitutes neglect. The statute defines neglect as physical or mental injury of a non-accidental nature.
A rash of incidents of children left in cars prompted Metro Police Lt. Jeff Carlson of the abuse and neglect section to suggest that the department push for a change in the current statute next year in the Legislature.
This became an issue last summer as two Las Vegas children died after being left in hot vehicles.
The parents of those children were not charged with any crime, however, because prosecutors determined they didn't willfully neglect their kids; they forgot the children were in their vehicles.
In about a half-dozen other cases, however, parents or caregivers were cited for child neglect because they purposely left kids unattended in cars.
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