AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- A Texas man has been charged with child abandonment after police said he his left four young children home alone while he went out drinking with friends.
Police said Humberto Garcia-Garcia, 26, of Austin left the children -- two 6-month-old infants, a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old -- alone about 6 1/2 hours, The Austin American-Statesman reported.
After being alerted by a neighbor the children were left alone, police found Garcia-Garcia's phone number, and a dispatcher who reached him at 11:23 p.m. Sunday said he sounded intoxicated, an arrest affidavit said.
Garcia-Garcia told authorities he was drinking with friends at Club Carnival on Riverside Drive and when he met officers at his East Austin apartment at 1:30 a.m. Monday, "smelled of a strong alcoholic beverage," the affidavit said.
The affidavit said about 10:45 p.m. Sunday, officers responded to a report that four children had been abandoned at an apartment on Reagan Hill Drive, near U.S. 183 in East Austin.
The neighbor said she found a young girl crying outside an apartment and, after hearing babies inside, found the two infants inside with soiled diapers crying on a bed and changed their clothes, police said.
Officers said the apartment was crawling with insects, smelled of urine and was littered with piles of soiled diapers.
Garcia-Garcia, charged with felony child abandonment, was in custody Tuesday on $6,500 and is being detained for immigration reasons, jail records show.
