Dad Allegedly Leaves Five-Year-Old In Cold Car While He Was At Nightclub

A Houston-area man stands accused of abandoning his five-year-old son in the middle of the night while he was inside a local nightclub.

The youngster was reportedly left in a car outside the B.Y.O.B Eclipse club, an after-hours establishment, for about two hours early Sunday morning. The temperature in the vehicle was said to have dropped to 40s at the time.

A club security guard fortunately saw the boy while making his rounds in the parking lot and contacted authorities. At first, the guard thought the passenger was woman, but luckily he checked back on the vehicle later that morning for a closer inspection and realized it was a child left alone.

Security inside the club located the father, but he initially took off.

The suspect, Dewayne Keith Winn, 44, apparently told responding Harris County constables after he returned to the scene shortly thereafter that he only stopped into the club briefly to use the restroom. Evidence suggested otherwise, however. “[Capt. Wally] Wieghat said security guards at the club take a time stamp photo of patrons’ IDs when they enter the club. Wieghat said the picture showed Winn entered the club just before 3 a.m. and didn’t leave until after 5 a.m.,” Click2Houston reported.

The captain added that the boy “was cold and he was shivering and he was hungry; one of the officers went and bought food for him.”

Winn faces a charge of abandoning a child with intention to return and was booked into the Harris County jail on a $15,000 bond. “If convicted, he could face a $10,000 fine as well as a jail term ranging from 180 days to two years,” the Daily Mail reported.

The five-year-old’s mother was reportedly at home caring for a newborn when this incident went down.

Cops turned the five-year-old over to relatives.

Child Protective Services is also looking into the matter.

In July 2013, two women allegedly left four kids in a running car while they gambled in a Florida casino. Similarly, one of the moms told officers that she entered the casino merely to use the restroom. Surveillance video inside, however, showed the women heading to the slot machines.

Apart from the many disturbing if not horrifying stories that emerged over his past summer of kids left in hot cars, a Michigan woman earlier this month left her two daughters in a freezing cold car while she allegedly shot up heroin in a McDonald’s bathroom and then overdosed.

[image credit: Harris County Constable]