A 20-year-old Denver man was arrested Saturday after leaving a toddler in a locked car while he watched dancers at Shotgun Willie’s strip club.
According to a police incident report, a Glendale officer was flagged down at 6:46pm on May 10 by a Fascinations adult superstore manager who was concerned about a 3-year-old girl left unattended in a car in the store’s lot at 4111 East Virginia Avenue.
“The child appeared very afraid, and seemed to ‘cower’ in the rear seat,” says the report. “There was no food or water left in the vehicle.” The officer estimated the temperature outside was about fifty degrees and that the front driver’s side window of the vehicle was open about three inches.
The manager said he had seen a black male in a striped shirt exit the vehicle and enter the adjacent strip club approximately 25 minutes earlier. When officers entered the establishment, they identified Alan Baxter as the man fitting the description. Baxter had a bottle of beer and was handing money to a topless dancer.
Baxter was initially evasive in his responses to police questions, but eventually admitted that the child was his girlfriend’s daughter. Police phoned Daphne Phillips, who said that she had given her boyfriend twenty dollars to take the little girl out for dinner at McDonalds while she was at work.
“Baxter admitted the $16 dollars he had in one dollar bills was from the $20 Daphne had given to him to feed the child and himself,” the officer wrote. “Reportedly three dollars out of the $20 was used to pay the bar cover charge, and the ones were to tip the dancers.”
After purchasing food for the child who “stated she was very hungry,” officers booked Baxter on one charge of child neglect at the Glendale Police Station, where the girl was later reunited with her mother.
The report adds that Baxter “stated leaving the child alone was ‘very stupid.’” –Jared Jacang Maher
