Nebraska Police Captain Cited for Child Abuse After 2-Year-Old Left in Hot Minivan

A Lincoln police captain and her partner were cited for child abuse after their toddler was found alone in a locked minivan at a Nebraska lake. The child had been inside for at least 28 minutes.

Lincoln Police Captain Cited After Toddler Found Alone in Locked Minivan at Pawnee Lake

A Nebraska police captain was cited for child abuse after a couple fishing at Pawnee Lake in Lincoln discovered her 2-year-old daughter locked and alone inside a black minivan on Sunday afternoon, Law & Crime reports.

Mayde McGuire, 54, a captain with the Lincoln Police Department, and her partner Mary Tobiassen, 49, were both cited for misdemeanor child abuse. The two women were fishing at the lake when another couple walked past the vehicle and noticed the toddler inside, "crying and screaming." They called 911 after realizing the child was alone and the van was locked.

Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said during a Monday press conference that the girl had been by herself in the van for at least 28 minutes. The outdoor temperature that afternoon was 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Wagner noted "how quickly the interior of a vehicle can get extremely hot."

McGuire, who was off duty at the time, removed the child before deputies arrived on scene. The toddler was uninjured and returned to her parents.

Braydon Nichols and Izabella Glover, the couple who spotted the child, spoke to local CBS affiliate KOLN. Glover said the little girl had crawled out of her car seat and made her way to the front of the minivan, where she was banging on the window. "It wasn't a child just wanting to get out of something they didn't want to do," Glover told KOLN. "They wanted their parents. They didn't know what was going on."

At the scene, McGuire submitted to a preliminary breath test, which indicated a blood alcohol content of 0.108 — above the legal limit of 0.08 in Nebraska.

McGuire has since been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation. Neither she nor Tobiassen was taken into custody. Court dates for both women had not been set as of the time of reporting.

Source: Law & Crime