Deputies: Grandfather charged with child neglect after toddler left in rental car

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — Two rental car employees are credited with helping save a child from a hot car Monday evening.

Deputies said they were called to the Hertz car rental at the Daytona Beach International Airport just after 5 p.m., when two employees reported finding a child left unattended in the back seat.

When deputies arrived, they found one of the employees holding the 2-year-old child.

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When deputies arrived, they found one of the employees holding the 2-year-old child.

According to deputies, the car had been returned just after 5 p.m. and the child had been left alone in the car for about 45 minutes.

The temperature in the parking lot at the time was about 80 degrees.

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Deputies said they later received a call from the child’s mother, who told them she had just learned her father had left her daughter in the rental car.

The child’s mother told investigators that her father, 62-year-old David Towner of Port Orange, had been babysitting his granddaughter for the day when he left her in the rental car.

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After being examined by paramedics, the child was returned to her mother.

Towner was charged with one count of child neglect and booked into the Volusia County Jail.

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