While getting a haircut and stopping for a drink at a bar in the sweltering heat, a Florida father is accused of abandoning his defenseless toddler to perish inside his hot car for hours.
When Scott Allen Gardner, 33, stopped at Hanky Panky’s Lounge in Ormond Beach, Florida, on June 6 to freshen up his hair, he allegedly locked his 18-month-old son, Sebastian, inside his hot truck, according to the police.
According to a Facebook post from the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, the unaccompanied child was left in the car’s sweltering heat for more than three hours while the outside temperature rose to 92 degrees.
According to medical examiners, while the infant was sitting in the truck, his body temperature rose to a lethal 111 degrees.
Sebastian was given life-saving treatments by law authorities, but the infant eventually passed away from his wounds.
Little Sebastian was enjoying a day in the Ormond-by-the-Sea neighborhood, which is eight miles north of Daytona Beach, when he was killed, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, and Gardner is to blame.
According to the sheriff’s office, the callous father allegedly provided investigators with numerous false reports about what transpired before his son died.
After police located Gardner at his mother’s house in Ormond Beach, he was taken into custody on Thursday.
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Gardner was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect causing great bodily harm after being arrested and taken to the Volusia County Jail.
He was given a bond of $100,000.
The sheriff’s office’s bodycam footage showed the deadbeat father being taken into custody inside the property’s enclosed porch.
“The same OBPD officer who tried to revive Sebastian placed Gardner in handcuffs today as he was taken into custody at his mother’s home in Ormond Beach,” according to the sheriff’s office.
Two anonymous individuals shouted their love for Gardner as he was being escorted out of the house.
Before one of the officers told Gardner, “I love you guys. Say goodbye, because you’re not going to come back here again.”
