Port Royal parents jailed for leaving special needs teen and man in car for hours
A Port Royal mother and father face charges of felony neglect after police were called to check on two people with special needs allegedly left in a hot car for hours in Bluffton.
Natasha Nicole Dupont, 47, and Rodaeus Darnell Wright, 46, of Port Royal, are the parents of a 17-year-old son and a 20-year-old son, who police say are autistic and nonverbal.
The parents each were charged with one count of unlawful neglect of a child and one count of neglect of a vulnerable adult, jail records show. They allegedly left their sons in a nearby parking lot while at work, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Beaufort County police were called to Walmart in Bluffton around 8 p.m. Thursday after a caller requested a welfare check. The caller had driven by a parked car around 2 p.m. and saw two people inside; when the caller passed by six hours later, the car and its occupants were still there.
Police found the teen and man inside the car, and they were taken to the hospital to be treated for heat exhaustion, according to Sgt. Danny Allen, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office.
Dupont and Wright were working their respective shifts at Walmart and the nearby Sam’s Club while their sons were in the car, Allen said. Police brought two felony charges against each, accusing the couple of neglect. If convicted, they each could face 15 total years of prison time.
Allen said the teen and man were in the car for “at least six hours” but did not have an exact answer. Weather Underground data from that period Thursday afternoon shows Bluffton’s temperatures spanning from a high of 77 degrees to the evening’s low of 70 degrees — conditions that can heat a parked car into triple-digit temperatures in less than an hour, according to a study from the geosciences department of San Francisco State University.
Dupont and Wright were released Friday from the Beaufort County Detention Center on personal recognizance bonds, meaning neither is required to post bail unless they fail to appear in court.
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