(Ogden Weber Applied Technology College in Ogden, Utah. (OWATC)
Utah police are examining surveillance video which shows a father leaving his 5-year-old daughter alone at a college overnight in the cold.
Fox 13 Salt Lake City reports that an Ogden-Weber Applied Technology College security guard found the girl in a parking lot last Sunday and that the experience left the girl traumatized according to the mother.
“She said she got scared,” the girl’s mother told the station. “She was yelling, ‘Daddy!’ but no one was there.”
The girl had a blanket and was wearing pajamas. She brave temperatures just above freezing. She had been staying with her father for the weekend, the station reported.
Fox 13 reported Friday that it was not naming the parents to protect the child.
Police in Ogden and the Utah Department of Child and Family Services are investigating. The father could face child endangerment charges, according to the station.
Odgen Police Lt. Tim Scott told the Gephardt Daily that there are some reports that the father had been using drugs.
"We don't know really what purpose he'd take the child, if there was a drug-induce event or some kind of psychosis," Scott said.
The girl was crying when the security guard found her, Fox 13 reported. She scraped a knee and her hand when she tripped and fell as she ran towards him.
“It was heartbreaking for him,” security manager Fred Frazier told the station, referring to the security guard. “To see a little girl running alone by herself, that’s when he got very concerned, and she was shivering and cold.”
Frazier told Fox 13 what he saw as he watched the surveillance footage.
“She stays right where she was told to stay,” he said.
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