The two parents arrested for allegedly leaving their toddler daughter in a car while they went to a bar got into a nasty spat in the back of a police vehicle over who was to blame.
Kristina Vitucci, 35, and her boyfriend Joshua Harris, 39, were arrested on charges of felony child neglect after their two-year-old child was spotted in the back of a Honda SUV around 8:15 pm on January 28.
The Edgewater Police Department were called to the parking lot of a bar off Ridgewood Avenue after a concerned bystander noticed the screaming child in the vehicle all by herself.
After rescuing her, Harris soon introduced himself to police officers and told them that Vitucci was drinking inside the bar.
Both the mother and boyfriend were then questioned separately before being placed in the back of a police squad car, as a camera picked up an argument the couple had about the incident.
‘I like literally cannot even just believe that all this s**t happened, honestly,’ Vitucci said, as her boyfriend responded: ‘I can.’
‘I f***ing can’t!,’ the irate mother answered, as Harris said: ‘You brought her to a bar, and you sat inside!’
‘I also asked you to leave, how many times?!,’ Vitucci told Harris. ‘I told you to f***ing leave! I told you not to come here,’ he responded.
‘You didn’t tell me not to come here,’ she said. ‘I said go home!’ Harris yelled.
The caller who dialed 911 told the dispatcher: ‘I don’t know that there’s an actual emergency, but there’s a baby out here in a car by itself.
‘I just don’t want anybody to get mad at me. But I just, you know, this is wrong,’ they continued as the dispatcher agreed.
When officers arrived at the scene they quickly located the crying toddler inside the unlocked car.
Authorities said that she was very cold and was only wearing thin clothing despite the low temperatures that night.
Just as she was rescued, Harris approached the officers and said he was the owner of the vehicle ‘but I’m not her mother.’
‘Hello – I mean, I am the owner of this vehicle, but I’m not her mother,’ Harris said as he put his hands up.
‘OK,’ the female officer responded, as Harris continued: ‘She’s [the mother] inside. I just grabbed the keys from her and checked on her.’
‘Check on who?,’ the officer asked Harris. ‘Her,’ he responded, pointing toward the baby.
He said he came to check on the child while the girl’s mother was inside the bar.
Cops then located Vitucci drinking inside the bar before escorting her outside to question her and her boyfriend separately.
‘I asked how long they’ve been here, she said “I got here at seven”, they were here before that,’ a male officer told his partner.
Vitucci, who sat outside the bar, then started slurring her words as she angrily responded: ‘I was not here before that, I literally did not get back…’
One of the officers then went to question Harris, who leaned on the back of his car as they did so.
‘I told her multiple times to go in the car and go to my house,’ he said.
The officer then asked: ‘OK, did she have any drinks while she was in there?’
Harris hesitated a bit before saying: ‘At the very last minute, I think yes.’ When asked if his girlfriend told him that her child was in the car, Harris said that she did.
The couple were both arrested that night and booked into Volusia County Jail early the following morning, jail records, reviewed by DailyMail.com, show.
The Edgewater Police Department announced their arrests on Facebook, saying: ‘So disgusting we don’t even have a caption… Last night, the mother (Kristina Vitucci) & her boyfriend (Joshua Harris) left their 2 year old in an unlocked vehicle while they sat inside a bar drinking for nearly 2 hours.
‘Both were arrested for child neglect. Do better.’
They were released a few hours later on January 29, each on $5,000 cash bonds, according to arrest records.
Vitucci is scheduled to appear in court on February 18, and Harris is set to appear on February 25, court records show.
It is unclear who is taking care of the baby following the incident. DailyMail.com contacted the Edgewater Police Department.