January 16, 2017
A Delaware County father has been ticketed by police after reportedly leaving his 1-year-old daughter alone in the back of his running Honda CR-V, which was stolen and recovered on Jan. 7.
According to the Delaware County Daily Times, the 40-year-old Havertown father, who wasn’t identified, was given a traffic citation for leaving a child under 6 in a car unattended. The citation was said to have been filed on Friday by Marple Township Police.
According to the report, the parents were “frantic” when they called police to report that their Honda CR-V, along with their child in the car seat in the back, had been stolen from the parking lot of the township's Sproul Plaza shopping center.
The report goes on to explain that the child's father had allegedly left her in the vehicle while shopping at Wawa and a bakery in the shopping center.
Dillon Valenti, 22, of Havertown, who has since been charged in the incident, told police he didn’t know the child was in the car, which he said was left running and unattended for “15 to 20 minutes.”
After driving away, Valenti reportedly noticed the child and subsequently abandoned the car, but left it running with the heat on, which is how police found it, with the child still in the back, a few minutes after it went missing.
Read the full story here.
