A two-year-old was allegedly left in a freezing car for hours, with the man who abandoned him caught acting suspiciously on security video at a Washington gas station, WTSP reported on Monday.
Charles Fife told a gas station clerk that he needed help finding his car with the boy, Jesse Dillon, inside.
Fife did not want to call 911, which angered the female clerk.
"It angered her very much, it was the maddest she's been at somebody in a long time," said Erick Athos, the manager of the gas station.
The clerk eventually called police on her own after watching Fife go in and out of the store a few times. Fife allegedly said that he didn't want to talk to the police, and that his son is tough and could handle the cold.
Fife does not have custody of Jesse, Ana Dillon, the boy's mother, told the Yakima Herald. She doesn't receive child support either, and said that Fife has an extensive criminal record including drug charges and bank robbery. He was most recently arrested in 2012 for possession of methamphetamine and heroin.
Dillon's sister suspects Ana Dillon went to visit Fife with Jesse and that's how the boy ended up in his father's care.
"Yes, I messed up and I admit to that, and I'm paying for that right now. I'm paying for what happened to him," Ana Dillon said. "Jesse's paying for it. That's the worst thing I could have ever done."
Though Jesse is on the road to recovery, doctors said it may take two weeks for him to be back to normal after being exposed to temperatures as low as zero degrees Fahrenheit. He was wearing only a T-shirt, pants and a soiled diaper when he was saved from the cold car.
