Florida dad arrested for leaving his terrified 5-year-old daughter alone in haunted house for hours on Halloween
MERRITT ISLAND, FLORIDA: A father has been arrested after leaving his terrified 5-year-old daughter alone inside a haunted house for hours.
35-year-old Charles Jones has been charged with child neglect for leaving his child at the neighborhood haunted house located in Merritt Island in Florida on Friday, November 1.
The child was found wandering inside the haunted house by another visitor last week. The woman watched over the child for over an hour as other visitors tried to find Jones.
When they could not locate him, they called the police.
The authorities revealed that the woman who was watching the child said that the 5-year-old appeared to be very scared during that time. The officials also revealed that Jones had left the child inside the house for at least two and a half hours.
Jones had allegedly made no effort whatsoever to come back for his daughter or even contact the authorities until the police called his family.
The 'haunted house' is a private residence and is a local attraction that gets hundreds of visitors a year around Halloween time. As per a probe affidavit, Jones had "never attempted to go back to the aforementioned haunted house".
Eventually, Jones turned himself in.
He was charged with child neglect and was booked into the Brevard County Jail. He was then released on a $3,000 bond and will appear in court on December 3. According to court records, Jones has an attorney from the public defender's office.
Jones' rap sheet includes convictions for armed robbery, aggravated assault, narcotics possession, cocaine sales, and resisting an officer with violence. Since 2003, he has spent around more than 11 years in state prison on two separate cases. He was last released by the Florida Department of Corrections in April last year.