'Insane': Metro couple accused of leaving toddlers home alone
Nov 13, 2024
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Two Oklahoma City parents are facing criminal charges, accused of leaving their two toddlers home alone for over an hour.
According to court documents, on November 3, a driver near Northwest 16th and Villa Avenue found a three-year-old girl in the street by herself. An officer said the driver told them they knocked on a home nearby and asked the homeowner if it was their daughter. The homeowner told the driver it was not their child, and identified suspects Rudy Lopez and Jessica Lopez-Paz, their next door neighbors, as the parents. Police say they weren't home.
Jessica Lopez-Paz. Oklahoma County Detention Center.
Rudy Lopez. Oklahoma County Detention Center.
"That is absolutely unacceptable," said neighbor Amber Carrigan. "You cannot leave a child in diapers at home by themselves. That's insane. I mean, it's just disheartening. It's scary."
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When Oklahoma City Police officers responded to the incident, documents say they went inside to find a second toddler boy inside the home by himself.
Police had to wait over an hour for their parents to show up.
"They can't even go to the bathroom by themselves yet," said Carrigan. "There's no way that a child of that, what, two years old cannot [stay at home alone]. I mean, like they can turn the stove on and burn the house down. There's all kinds of thing that can happen."
News 4 asked Carrigan if there's any amount of time she would be comfortable with leaving any toddler home alone as a mother herself.
"Leaving them for five minutes alone to run around the corner is not even acceptable," said Carrigan. "I mean, I'm just a different kind of parent I guess, I don't know....Whenever I was growing up and whenever I was raising my kid, there's no way, you don't leave a child by themselves at all."
Both Lopez and Lopez-Paz were arrested on felony child neglect complaints and have been formally charged.
Lopez-Paz is out on bond, so News 4 employees stopped by to ask for her side of the story Tuesday afternoon. She noted she did not wish to be interviewed.
Documents say she and Lopez did allegedly tell police a babysitter never showed up, so they left the door locked and a cell phone in the house.
Police say they lied about the babysitter.
"What are they going to do with the cell phone?" Carrigan asked. "They're going to pick it up and look at it and they're going to punch buttons until they get somebody in Taiwan."
Several other neighbors that News 4 spoke with off-camera agreed with Carrigan. One neighbor said that as a mother herself, she empathized, and that sometimes in life "stuff happens."
"Somebody with bad intentions could have picked them up," said Carrigan. "They could have been long gone. I mean, they could have been kidnapped. They could have been hurt. They could have hurt themselves. There's so many things that could have happened. It just makes me really sad to think about that."