Florida Dad Hit the Bar While Baby Died in Hot Truck: Police

A Florida father is behind bars, accused of running errands and drinking alcohol while his young son was left to die inside of a hot car. The little boy, just 18 months old, was reportedly trapped for hours as temperatures soared. Police releasing body camera footage of the moment that father was arrested. Thank you for joining us.

 I’m Kennedy Walker and I’ll walk you through the details. You’re watching Law and Crime. Body camera video from the Valuchia County Sheriff’s Office shows the moment 33-year-old Scott Gardner was arrested. Accused of leaving his son to die in a sweltering hot truck. Scott, why’d you step? Authorities say Gardner left 18-month-old Sebastian inside the vehicle for nearly 3 hours while he got a haircut and then went to a bar.

Sheriff Michael Chitwood not holding back. This father is a human piece of garbage and he’s a lion sack of and he’s exactly where he belongs to be. Investigators say Gardner gave multiple false accounts of what happened that day. The witness statements painted a different picture. He’s there from noon to 2:40.

 So for 2 hours and 40 minutes, that little guy is inside that car. So he drinks his beers. He has a couple shots of uh of uh fireball and then he comes out of the bar. By the time Gardner returned to the truck, his son was already dead. But instead of calling 911, deputies say he drove to his mother’s house and only then did he call for help.

 Police releasing the frantic 911 call. How old is he? A year and a half. Okay. Is he breathing? No. Is he you don’t see any chest rising or falling? Hello. [Music] [Music] Hello. Okay. Can you get him on a hard flat surface? the hard service. Okay. Are you guys inside now? Cuz I’ve got units on the way there to you. According to police, Sebastian’s body temperature was 111°.

Deputies say the toddler was left in his father’s truck with no air conditioning and that gardener lowered the windows and had a small portable fan on, but it barely reached the child, leading to his death. There’s no logical reason why this little guy is dead. I don’t think there’s a penalty on this earth that could ever fit for the crime that was committed here.

 But Sheriff Chitwood says it was what Gardner did after his son was pronounced dead that was disturbing. What does he do? He picks up his mother and they go back to Hanky Pankies for a few more cocktails and they’re there until almost midnight. Gardner is now facing charges including aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect.

 As he’s led away in handcuffs, someone off camera offered support. I love you. Love you guys. But the response from authorities is immediate. Goodbye cuz you’re not going to come back here again. Gardner is being held on a $100,000 bond. Sheriff Chitwood had this final message for him. My hope for him is every night when he closes his eyes and every morning when he opens his eyes, his son Sebastian is sits there and says, “Dad, why did you do this to me?” Because there is no reason for this little boy to be dead.

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 So, scan the QR code on your screen, click the link below, or go to forthepeople.com/lcdepo to see if you qualify. And here to break down the story with me is criminal defense attorney Kathleen Boen Shoots. Kathleen, thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks for having me. So, let’s just jump right in. What a horrible story out of Florida.

 We know that Mr. Gardner is facing aggravated manslaughter and child neglect. How serious are those charges in Florida? And how many years is he facing if convicted? Both of those uh so the aggravated manslaughter of a child and uh a aggravated uh uh child abuse, those are both 30-year felonies in Florida. It would also not surprise me if uh they were going to a grand jury to indict him on first-degree murder because one of the things that we have in Florida is a felony murder statute.

 So, if you commit a homicide while you are in the course of committing uh one of these uh enumerated felonies, it’s not every felony, but it’s uh if if you’re in the course of committing aggravated child abuse and the child dies in the course of that, you can be charged with first-degree murder. So, even if there was no intent to uh to kill the child, um if you were engaging in a felony, a lot of times uh you’ll you’ll see it charged, somebody robs a bank and a teller ends up getting shot.

 Um that’s, you know, while you’re in the course of this robbery, somebody dies, that’s felony murder. It wouldn’t shock me if they’re going to a grand jury to get that indicted. Of course, in Florida, the only way to proceed on a first-degree murder is via grand jury indictment. There’s no way to charge that at the prosecution level.

 So, oftentimes you’ll see people even just in your run-of-the-mill homicide be charged with seconddegree murder and then have that upgraded to a first-degree murder once the prosecutors have had the opportunity to present that to a grand jury. Is aggravated manslaughter treated differently when the victim is a child.

 So, aggravated manslaughter of a child is the charge. So, uh, you know, usually a manslaughter charge would, for example, DUI manslaughter is a seconddegree felony. Aggravated manslaughter of a child is a a first-degree felony. And then, of course, it can also be the predicate felony for a felony murder charge, which is what I think may be happening here.

They do have a certain number of days to proceed forward with that. I think they need to have the indictment within 30 days. So, it’s something that we could see pop up here in the future uh once this uh state attorney’s office has the case and they’ve done all of their investigation. And police say that the suspect gave multiple false accounts.

 Could those lies open him up to additional charges like obstruction or misleading police? Yes. Uh they could um you could see him be charged with obstruction or making false statements in for example we have uh like Kaye Anthony laws in the state of Florida that if you make a false statement in the death of a child or the disappearance of a child there’s additional ways to charge you there.

Really what that shows is that he knows he did something wrong. It’s consciousness of guilt right that the story keeps changing. there’s only one version of the truth or maybe tell it a different way, but it’s it certainly doesn’t change the way his story changed. And according to police, this wasn’t, you know, one of the the tragic stories that we’ve covered before of a parent who just forgot their child in a hot car. He allegedly went drinking.

Does that change how the law views his negligence? Yeah. So, um, I actually have a friend who participated in an amicus brief. amicus meaning a friend of the court brief um on a uh on the hot car deaths and usually it’s a parent who’s kind of on autopilot on their way to work and maybe one parent always drops off the child but today it’s a different story because the kid had a doctor’s appointment or mom’s going in late or what have you but they deviate from their usual course that morning and the child ends up getting driven to work and

left in the hot car. And the premise of this amicus brief that my friend wrote is that, you know, there’s no men’s rhea to commit any kind of offense against this child. A lot of us can get to a point where like I don’t remember driving to work today. My car drove itself here, but I certainly didn’t get into a car accident.

 I’m pretty sure I didn’t run any lights. Uh because it’s it’s just muscle memory at that point. And usually that is how we end up with one of those really tragic hot car deaths where a child dies in the backseat of a car and there’s really no intent there. This seems to be a very different scenario. Although I will note that the car seat appears to have still been a rear-facing car seat.

 So that the child would have been facing towards the back of the vehicle because the guidelines these days are that the child should remain rearfacing for as long as you possibly can before you flip that car seat to face forward. So, I suppose that might form a little bit of a defense there, but I mean, I have a child that is the exact same age as this child, and they are battering and loud, and it’s usually a fight to get them to go down for their nap in the afternoon.

Just me as a parent, I I don’t see the child falling asleep in the car seat for that long, at least my kid. Absolutely. And I feel like this is something that we talk about more and more every day, just about these hot car deaths, which are so unfortunate and so tragic. What kind of legal responsibility do parents have when it comes to leaving children in vehicles, even if it’s just for a few minutes? Well, depending on where you live, um it it certainly is more dangerous uh where I am in Florida um in the summer than it

is uh in Alaska in the winter. you may have a a an other direction issue there. Cars can heat up, I think it’s like 10° a minute when the AC is off and the car is sitting in the sun. You almost have like a mini greenhouse effect happening in the vehicle and children’s temperatures can skyrocket.

 I think they said this little boy’s temperature was likely at least 111° at one point in time and that’s not survivable. So in leaving a child in a vehicle for any period of time during the summer is inadvisable. We have a rule in my house where the kid comes out first and the kid goes in last. So basically, you know, the groceries or whatever, kid comes out first, you know, basically screw the ice cream.

 Um if you if you just came from the grocery store, kid comes out first, kid go kid goes in last. And if uh if you get some melted ice cream out of it, then that’s the way the cookie crumbles, right? And and I think that’s some great advice there. And the sheriff, like how you mentioned, said that the child’s body was 111°. How powerful is medical evidence like that to prove criminal neglect.

So I extremely powerful. Um, but I I think that what would really shock people and anyone who listens to this trial is going to be how quickly that likely happened in a vehicle that, you know, leaving him in there for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, you’re already getting to the point where this kid is heating up and heating up and heating up and is not doing well in this car.

 Also, keep in mind that small children don’t regulate their body temperatures as well as we do as adults. and the fact that this child is harnessed into a car seat probably with padding around it. So, you know, where you or I wearing a t-shirt and shorts in the vehicle, we might be able to kind of dump heat off of our arms and off of our back and, you know, move around a little bit.

 This kid is basically strapped into and usually a dark colored car seat. It’s really shocking how quickly this can occur. And what I also want to say as a parent because I used to prosecute these kinds of cases and I used to advocate for not charging parents in the scenarios that we’re describing where it appears to be a genuine error that there are multiple ways you can try to prevent this in your house.

 I thought to myself because I’m always listening to a podcast or listening to the radio and I’m distracting myself from myself most of the morning. You as the coffee kicks in. Um, there’s one one way to do this is take, if you drive with your right foot, take your left shoe, put your left shoe in the back seat with your child. Put your phone in the back seat with your child. Do something like that.

 It will cause you to look in the back seat at all times. I even uh managed to put like an Apple Air Tag when my daughter was very, very small when we were bringing her uh her infant seat with her to daycare. I even attached an ear tag to that infant seat and we would leave the infant seat with her at daycare and then I set up an alarm because my husband was usually the one that did the drop off but I set up an alarm on that ear tag when it arrived at daycare that it would message me and if it ever arrived at his office I would get another alarm.

Wow, that that’s really great advice here. And with technology, constantly technology. Yeah, they you know that I think it’s important that that parents use that. Unfortunately, in this case, it seems like how we mentioned just more neglect um than that than just what appears to be, you know, a regular accident.

 And I think what’s important here is the timeline that the sheriff kind of drew out that this father allegedly went to get a haircut. And you would think that that would be bad that he left the son allegedly in the car during the haircut, but no. After that, he then reportedly went to a bar. His defense might argue that he cracked the windows and used a fan.

 I know that’s something that police said that the suspect allegedly told them. Does that hold any weight legally? To me, that means he knew the kid was in the car. You know, you don’t turn on a fan and crack the windows. I mean, maybe you’ll crack the windows. It’s Florida. It’s really hot.

 Maybe you do that for your own comfort, but you certainly don’t turn on a fan when nobody else is in the car. Could he argue like, oh, you know, maybe it wasn’t the best decision to leave my child in the car, but you know, at least I rolled down the windows or at least I had a fan going on my son. I think the best defense in these cases is I didn’t realize my kid was in the car.

 You know, like the forgotten child thing where we deviate from our general morning routine and mom doesn’t realize she still has the kid in the car. In this case, I mean, I think that might even lead to a faster conviction because there can be no question that he knew the child was in the car. There can be no question that uh he was turning on the fan. That makes a lot of sense.

 And it seems like the evidence is is overwhelming in this case. Police have body camera video, 911 calls, and witness statements that, you know, reportedly place him at the bar while his son was in the car dying at that point. How does that multi-angle evidence shape a prosecutor’s case? Well, I I think you’re going to see quite a bit of the body cam.

 Um I and and let me also say this that first responders who respond to these kinds of cases are usually fairly upset by them and we even saw that in the sheriff’s uh press conference that he was pretty upset about this as he should be. Most normal parents would never do something like this on purpose.

 And that’s what that fan there to me. The fan being on, the fact that you could show on the body cam that there was a fan in the back seat with the child and maybe there’s surveillance outside the uh hair salon or the bar that would show him cracking the windows and maybe turning on the fan if it’s a battery powered fan.

 I mean, that’s all intent there to me. And this certainly isn’t the kind of case that I would have advocated not to charge. I’m just saying that usually these were just horrific, tragic scenarios where the parent had no intent for anything bad to happen to this child ever, much less what occurred.

 And the sheriff said that Mr. Gardner went back to the bar after his son died. Can a jury take post- crime behavior like that into account, or will it be argued maybe he was grieving? I heard that he picked up his mother and went to the bar. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what police said said in the press conference. I heard that, too.

 I I just I just think it defies comprehension that you would go back to the place where you were when your son died later that day and continue drinking as opposed to bring flowers or, you know, sit there and mourn. If I were his lawyer, I’d be looking into some kind of like, please tell me he’s an alcoholic and we can try to claim this is a medical issue.

 You know, it’s I mean, it’s just it’s probably one of the less sympathetic things I’ve ever seen a defendant do in a criminal case. I can understand wanting to drink after finding out a family member has died, but I can’t understand needing to go back to a bar where that person died and and maybe not even participating in the investigation.

 Could mental health or substance abuse be raised in court as mitigating factors? Sure. Um, I I just don’t know. I mean, this case occurred in Orlando. I don’t know how long this gentleman has lived in Orlando. Um, I was born and raised in South Florida. Now I live in Tallahassee where, you know, just similar um similar temperatures over the summer.

 Let’s put it that way. It is beaten into our heads like from the time we are small that hot cars, summer, dead kids. And every year you still see them. though I don’t know how I mean unless he was completely divorced from reality and that’s why turning that fan on is so devastating to this case for him because clearly I mean I don’t know if the voices were telling him to leave this kid in the car but something told him to turn on that fan.

So it does appear that he was comprehending that it was going to get very hot in that car and that he needed to do something. The case is clearly emotional and the victim is a toddler. So because of this, what kind of impact does that have on jury selection? Well, um, you know, I I as I said, you know, I I as a another parent, I I think I would be quick to not judge a parent who I I think genuinely accidentally left a child in a vehicle because I, you know, given the number of safeguards I put around my kid, I knew that I could

potentially do that, too. But in this case where you’re turning on the fan, the fan I think is the most devastating thing in this. Not the cracking of the windows because people do that all the time in the summer in Florida just to for their own comfort when they get back in the car.

 So, but the turning on the fan to me is just the that is the the nail in the coffin here, right? And and even more so, you know, when jurors hear things like the father was allegedly taking fireball shots while that baby was sitting in the hot car dying, just how hard is that for a defense team to overcome? Uh, I think it incredibly difficult.

Now, it’s not against a lot of drink if you’re a parent. Um, it’s not against the law to go to a bar if you’re a parent, but it’s the turning on that fan for the kid in the back seat while you go into a bar with the car off. Not that I would suggest you leave the child in a running car either, but that’s the thing that defies comprehension to me and I I think that any other parent would be extremely judgmental of anyone who does any other person.

 I mean, I don’t think you need to be a parent. All you have to do is live in the world. And the jury that they pick is going to be other Flidians. So, anybody born and raised in Florida who’s lived here for a certain number of years knows how many times we see on the news, “Do not leave children in cars. Do not leave pets in cars.

” Seeing people break out windows to save a dog that was accidentally left in a car in a parking lot. Picking a jury out of Flidians is not going to go well. Could this go the plea deal route or are prosecutors likely to push for the max? I don’t know if it’s going to go a plea deal route.

 I don’t know how reasonable this person could possibly be given his actions that led to the child’s death and his actions afterward, even after he realized the child was deceased and going back to the bar. So, a lot of this, and I I do criminal defense now, a lot of this is having really tough discussions with your client if you’re the defense attorney, going through the evidence and saying, “You turning on that fan, it’s bad.

 That shows you knew that kid was in there. We can’t try to argue that you didn’t know the kid was in the car. There’s a lot of really difficult discussions that you need to have as a defense attorney. Though, I would imagine that the state would make some sort of offer to them if he was amendable to taking it. I just don’t know if given his actions in this case, I can’t imagine that he’s going to do something that’s logical in conjunction with uh continuing forward in this prosecution.

Right. Well, this is a story that we will be following closely. Kathleen, thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks for having me. Sebastian’s family raised more than $2,800 in donations for his burial. On GoFundMe, they wrote, “Sbastian spirit and bright light will forever remain in the hearts of all who knew him and loved him.

” For Law and Crime, I’m Kennedy Walker.