Virginia Yearnd and John Guerrero were arrested Monday on second-degree felony child endangerment charges.
A Texas couple has been arrested after allegedly leaving their 11-year-old daughter home alone for a day and a half as they traveled to a rock concert more than 1,300 miles away, police said.
Deputies responding to a welfare check of a child believed to have been left home alone found the little girl trying to cook for herself in her Houston home Thursday, the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office said.
Police said the girl told them her parents, Virginia Yearnd and John Guerrero, had left the previous day for a concert in Detroit.
Initial attempts by deputies to contact the girl’s parents and other family members were unsuccessful, officials said.
Yearnd eventually contacted her daughter and told the deputies who were with her child at the time that she was on her way back from the concert and wanted her daughter to be left with her neighbor until she and the Guerrero arrived home that night, authorities said.
Investigators said Yearnd told them she asked her sister to check in on the little girl, but the child said no one had come, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Yearnd allegedly first said she and Guerrero were in Louisiana, but later admitted they had traveled to Detroit, where they saw the English heavy metal band Godflesh perform, court documents obtained by the Chronicle said.
Yearnd, 39, and Guerrero, 48, were arrested Monday on second-degree felony child endangerment charges.
They were held without bond, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said.
Child Protective Services was made aware of the incident, police said.
In Texas, a parent, or anyone who has custody or cares over a child under the age of 15, can face child endangerment charges if they "intentionally abandon the child in any place under circumstances that expose the child to an unreasonable risk of harm," according to the state’s penal code.
The little girl told deputies this wasn’t the first time she had been left alone at the home and she didn’t expect her parents to return until that Friday, KTRK-TV reported.
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