A woman was arrested on child neglect charges after police in South Florida said she abandoned her two children in an Uber and left them with the vehicle’s driver for about two hours, according to court documents.
On the evening of Friday, February 13, an officer with the Sunrise Police Department met with a man who said Emily Sabogal, 32, left her young children with him after she requested an Uber ride, the officer wrote in a probable cause affidavit viewed by Us Weekly.
The Uber driver called the police when Sabogal would not come back for her children, according to the affidavit.
“[Sabogal] showed that she had no intent on returning due to her lengthy absence,” the officer wrote in the filing.
When the officer met with the children, they were in “good health and spirit,” but said they were “thirsty and hungry” and “expressed their concern for their mother,” the affidavit continues.
Sabogal was arrested on charges of neglect of a child without great bodily harm and desertion of a child, court records show.
An attorney was not immediately listed for her in court records of Tuesday, February 17.
According to the affidavit, the Uber driver told police that when he picked up Sabogal and her two children on February 13, he noticed that she was holding a cup “with what he believed to contain [an] unknown liquor.”
While speaking Spanish, Sabogal kept repeating, “He thinks I’m stupid,” the Uber driver reported, the affidavit says.
Then she grabbed the driver’s phone and canceled the Uber ride, according to the affidavit.
The Uber driver said that Sabogal gave him $10 in cash and asked him to make a turn and stop the car, the affidavit says.
Sabogal told him that she would return in 3 minutes, but she didn’t according to the filing.
The Uber driver said he watched Sabogal walk into a nearby parking lot and lost sight of her, “thus deserting her two children and putting them at an unreasonable risk of harm by leaving them alone with an unknown individual,” the affidavit says.
He also said her children “were at no moment afraid and seemed playful when [Sabogal] exited his vehicle,” according to the filing.
After about an hour, the Uber driver called Sabogal, who told him she would return in “12 minutes,” then hung up, the affidavit says.
He tried to call her again to no avail, then called police, according to the affidavit.
A mother and daughter from Utah were found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room on Sunday, February 15, in what police have said was a murder-suicide, Us Weekly has learned. Tawnia McGeehan, 38, and her daughter, Addi Smith, were visiting Las Vegas from Utah for a cheerleading competition, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police have confirmed. […]
She was ultimately located outside of a nearby McDonald’s, where she was taken into custody, the affidavit says.
During the investigation, police learned Sabogal had visited Bob G’s Wings N’ Things in Sunrise with her children before she called for an Uber that evening, the affidavit says.
The staff told police that her “children were left unsupervised running around the business while [Sabogal] enjoyed multiple alcoholic beverages at the bar,” the officer wrote in the affidavit.
Sabogal is considered the primary caregiver for her children, according to police.
The children’s father said in an interview with WPLG that he is “very concerned for the safety” of the children.
He said that he intends to “seek full custody” of them, the TV station reported.
Sabogal posted bond on February 16 and was released, records show.
