Father pleads guilty to leaving son, kitten in hot truck while shopping at Wal-Mart

It was about 94 degrees one day last summer when Daniel Christopher Howard left his 6-year-old son and a kitten in a truck while he went into a Macon Wal-Mart.

The truck’s windows were rolled up and no air conditioning was on. The high temperature that day had been 95.

Speaking in Bibb County Superior Court on Friday, Howard, in shackles, recalled that July 7 evening.

It was 6 o’clock. He said his family was being evicted from their home and he’d stopped at the Zebulon Road Wal-Mart to cash a check in hopes they wouldn’t have to move. He was also going to grab some drinks.

His son, Aaden, a Heritage Elementary School student, stayed in the vehicle, a moving truck that Howard was using to haul their belongings.

Howard, 34, told the judge Friday that he and Aaden had argued because the boy didn’t want to go in the store. The boy, he said, wanted to keep playing with his new kitten.

Prosecutor Che'ferre Young said surveillance footage showed that Howard stayed in the store until 6:24 p.m., more than 10 minutes after another shopper noticed the boy while she was putting her groceries in her car.

The shopper watched the child for about five minutes. He was sweating. When his nose started bleeding, the shopper motioned for him to get out of the truck, Young said.

Someone called 911. An ambulance and a deputy got there before Howard came out of the store, she said.

Howard pleaded guilty to cruelty to children was sentenced to 10 years on probation. He must serve between two and four months in a probation detention center. He also has to attend parenting classes, pay a $500 fine and pay $500 toward reimbursing the state for his court-appointed attorney.

Before his sentence was announced, Howard tried to explain the incident.

He said the truck’s windows were down when he left Aaden and the kitten.

“I would never purposely hurt my child,” Howard said.

Judge Howard Simms, after asking a few questions about the time and date, and comparing weather conditions to the ones this week, asked him to explain how he could say he wouldn’t hurt his child, but yet he left Aaden in a hot truck.

“It was bad judgment on my part,” Howard admitted.

After Howard explained that he and the boy had argued about Aaden not wanting to go in the store, Simms asked him, “Who should win that argument?”

“It’s not up to him to make that call,” the judge said.

Howard said he had worked as a cable TV installer for a dozen years and admitted that he knows what it’s like to be out in the heat.

He wept as the judge told him the boy “could have died and it would have been because his daddy was stupid that day.”

Catherine Whitworth, Howard’s attorney, said neither her client nor Aaden’s mother have custody of the boy. He is with his grandparents in Columbia County — where Howard was living before his arrest in May. Howard and his estranged wife have agreed to enter a parenting program.

Howard’s wife is in jail on a drug charge, Young said.

Howard, who has three children and a stepdaughter, said he plans to file for divorce and hopes to regain custody of his children.

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to dismiss an additional charge — cruelty to animals — stemming from Aaden’s kitten also being left in the truck.

The kitten, whose name was not mentioned in a police report of the episode last July, was “panting profusely” and had wet, matted fur.

This story was originally published July 1, 2016 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Father pleads guilty to leaving son, kitten in hot truck while shopping at Wal-Mart."