DAVIE, Fla. – A Hollywood man faces child abuse charges after he left his two children alone, locked in a hot car for at least an hour while he searched a Davie junkyard for some car parts, police said.
Alan Luna was arrested Saturday at the U-Pull-It business in Davie.
However, Luna told Local 10 News on Tuesday that he is a good father and that surveillance video from the junkyard would clear his name.
"I told the police to look at the cameras," Luna said in Spanish. "Look at the cameras and see how long I was inside and where I parked the car. The car had the four windows lowered."
David police Sgt. Mark Leone said Luna's children, ages 6 and 7, were in the car for so long that a customer found them crying, sweating and complaining that their stomachs hurt.
Leone said the car was parked in the sun, with the ignition turned off and the windows cracked open only about an inch.
"The children were screaming and crying but refused to unlock the doors," a police report said.
After numerous attempts were made to contact the children's parent using the public announcement system, Davie fire-rescue personnel got the children out of the car, gave them water and cooled them down in the air-conditioned fire-rescue truck.
Rescuers told police the children were on the verge of heat stroke had they not been removed from the car.
Eventually, Luna returned and claimed that the children had only been left alone for "10 to 15 minutes," Leone said, but police had already been there longer than that.
The manager of the business told police that he believed the children had been left alone for two to three hours.
Luna was arrested and the children were turned over to their mother.
Luna's wife, Paola Almonte, defended him Tuesday, saying the couple's children were only left for a few minutes.
"They’re old enough that they could have opened the door in case of an emergency," Almonte told Local 10 News in Spanish. "They weren't the way (police) said they were."