Friday, May 7, 2004 | 11:15 a.m.
Metro Police are recommending no charges be filed against a Las Vegas woman whose car was repossessed with her 7-month-old child inside.
Officers at the scene of the woman's apartment in the Walnut Garden Apartments complex near Cheyenne Avenue and Lamb Boulevard determined that because she stepped away from the car for only a couple of minutes, her actions did not constitute neglect, said Lt. Jeff Carlson of Metro's child abuse and neglect unit.
The woman had been loading her car with items from inside her apartment about 2 a.m. Thursday when the vehicle was taken, he said. Investigators determined that the car was not out of the woman's range of view for more than a couple of minutes.
"My understanding is that they were moving out of their apartment or residence," Carlson said. "Because of the time the child was left alone and the distance and the activities she was doing, we decided not to arrest her."
Because she was not arrested, police are refusing to release her name.
The repo man had been watching the vehicle, waiting for the woman to step away from the car just long enough for him to slip inside the car and drive it away, police said, noting that people who do this work are experts at surreptitiously and quickly taking vehicles.
In this case, the repo man had only gotten a few blocks away from the apartment complex when he noticed the child in the car, so he called police who then returned the baby to the mother, Carlson said.
Department policy dictates that the investigators' report about the incident be forwarded to Clark County District Attorney David Roger's office where prosecutors will make the final decision as to whether to charge the woman, Carlson said.
In two June cases involving children left alone in cars, police recommended, and Roger filed, criminal charges against parents. A Las Vegas man who left his sleeping son in a running car outside a Starbucks on Durango Drive was charged with misdemeanor child endangerment and sentenced to six months probation. And a Las Vegas woman whose car was stolen with her 16-month-old son insside was ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.
Though the incidents occurred on summer days, neither child was harmed. But in a case in which an infant died after his father left him strapped in a car seat in the back of a hot van for much of the day, the parent was not charged.
That was because prosecutors look at whether a child was intentionally left in a vehicle, Roger said. In the van case, high school teacher David Fish forgot his 7-month-old son Hayden was in the family vehicle.
"The issue that comes in is whether they (parents) intentionally leave a child in harm's way," Roger said. "That's what eliminates those cases (like Fish's)."
Fire department officials have said that they were called to about 600 cases of children left in cars last year, though many of those were cases in which a child was accidentally locked in a car along with the car keys.
When deciding whether to pursue charges in cases of children left in cars Similar cases are difficult for investigators, who often weigh several factors in deciding whether to arrest a parent for leaving their children in cars, Carlson said.
Temperature, the amount of time the car is unattended and how far the parent is from the vehicle all play into the decision, he said. Thursday's decision not to arrest the mother was based in part on that night's cool temperature, he said.
"Everything is based on the specific circumstances for the case," Carlson said.
This marks the seventh time in three weeks a child has been left unattended in a car. In April, an SUV was stolen with a 1-year-old child inside as the father went into a gas station on Decatur. The thief later abandoned the car with the child inside. A Head Start employee was also fired that month for leaving a 3-year-old boy inside one of the agency's vans.
None of the children was injured but parents in five of the cases were arrested on child endangerment charges.
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