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Father Goes Back to Bar After Death of Son Abandoned in Hot Truck While He Was Drinking: Police

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Father Goes Back to Bar After Death of Son Abandoned in Hot Truck While He Was Drinking: Police

Volusia County Sheriff’s Office

The 33-year-old man was arrested on Thursday after his 18-month-old son died after being left for hours in a hot vehicle while his dad got a haircut and went drinking.

A man has been arrested after the death of his son, 18 months, who he allegedly “left helpless” in a hot truck for hours while he got a haircut and had a few drinks at a bar called Hanky Panky’s Lounge.

Volusia Sheriff’s Deputies and the Ormond Beach Police Department partnered together in the investigation and arreset of Scott Allen Gardner, 33, on charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect causing great bodily harm, according to a VSO press release.

Gardner’s arrest came on June 19, nearly two weeks after he left his son Sebastian alone in a hot truck for three hours on Friday, June 6. Police said that he gave “multiple false accounts” of what happened throughout their investigation.

“There’s no logical reason why this little guy is dead,” said Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood in a press conference on Friday, per People.

“We’ve seen it, people forget their kids in the back seat, but this was completely different,” he added, at another point calling Gardner, “a human piece of garbage.”

Authorities estimated that Sebastian’s body temperature reached 111 degrees while he was inside the vehicle, despite his father’s claims that he had taken measures to assure his son didn’t overheat.

Chitwood offered more details, according to local CBS affiliate WKMG, where he revealed that police determined that after his haircut at 11:30 a.m., Gardner was inside Hanky Panky’s from noon to 2:40 p.m.

They said that he actually left the bar at one point to check on the bartender’s car after someone had allegedly backed into it, but he did not at this time or any other time check on his son.

“For two hours and 40 minutes, that little guy is inside that car,” Chitwood said at the press conference. “He says the windows were down — but he’s a lying sack of s–t — with a little mini fan with AA batteries blowing on the baby.”

Even more surprising, despite the obvious distress of the baby in his truck — though it is unclear when Gardner became aware of this — he did not call 911 until after he’d driven home.

“My son’s not breathing. A year and a half. Oh my god. He just had his eyes open. Oh my god, Sebastian,” Gardner can be heard on the 911 call reported by People.

The first responder from the Ormond Beach Police Department attempted to revive Sebastian but was unable to do so after discovering he had already gone into rigor mortis, per police filings. Investigators believe he’d been dead up to two hours before the father called 911. His internal temperature was 107 degrees when he arrived at the hospital; he was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m.

After all of this occurred, and his son was declared dead, Chitwood said at the presser that Gardner “picks up his mother, and they go back to Hanky Panky’s for a few more cocktails.”

According to police, the pair stayed at the bar until around midnight that night, with one investigator telling the press that, according to witnesses, “didn’t seem as distraught as you would expect someone to be for the child having just passed.”

He went on to say that these statements are “consistent with the interactions that we had with [Gardner] at the hospital.” Police said, though, that they do not believe Gardner’s mother had yet been made aware that her grandson was dead.

“I don’t think there’s a penalty on this Earth that could ever fit for the crime that was committed here,” Chitwood said. “It absolutely shocks the conscience for this to even happen.”

It was the same officer who’d tried to resuscitate Sebastian two weeks ago who put handcuffs on Gardner Thursday at his mother’s home as he was taken into custody, per WKMG.

In the bodycam arrest video, two individuals can be heard telling Gardner they love him, as noted in The New York Post’s coverage, with him returning the sentiment. One of the arresting officers then said, “Say goodbye, because you’re not going to come back here again.”

As noted by Fox News, The National Highway Traffic warns to “never leave a child in a vehicle unattended for any length of time,” regardless of measures that might be taken to keep temperatures down as they tend to do “little to change the interior temperature of the vehicle.”

They also emphasized that people need to be aware that “a child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s. When a child is left in a vehicle, that child’s temperature can rise quickly – and the situation can quickly become dangerous.”

“We’ve seen it, people forget their kids in the back seat, but this was completely different. This was intentional,” Chitwood said in Friday’s press conference. “That’s what the charges are for.”

Per The Post, Gardner is being held in Volusia County jail on a $100,000 bond.

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