The club's assistant manager reportedly became suspicious when he saw one of his customers leave and come back every 15 minutes.
A California father was arrested after he allegedly left his infant inside a car while he spent an afternoon at a strip club, officials said.
Auwin Dargin, 24, pleaded not guilty to one count of child abuse after his 9-month-old baby girl was found crying in the parking lot by a strip club worker, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Monday.
The child had been left in her father’s car for about an hour while he popped into Synn Gentleman’s Club in North Hills at about 2 p.m. on March 9, prosecutors said.
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The club’s assistant manager, Matthew Nadeau, had become suspicious when he saw that one of his customers left kept leaving and coming back every 15 minutes, the Los Angeles Times reported.
He and a waitress went outside the club, where they heard a baby and found the crying child in a car with the window partly open, he told the Times.
Seeing that she was visibly shaken up, Nadeau and others managed to get her out of the car and give her water since she was warm, he said.
After a manager told Dargin they had found his baby, he tried to leave the club and take his child with him.
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Dargin reportedly said “Just give me my baby and I know I am messing up,” angry that his lap dance had been interrupted.
The father accused Nadeau of kidnapping his daughter and then got into a dispute with another customer before fleeing without his child, the Times wrote.
Police arrived on the scene before he could get away.
If convicted as charged, Dargin faces a possible maximum sentence of six years in state prison, authorities said.
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