Woman who left 1-year-old daughter in desert appears in court

By Cara McCoy

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 | 10:26 a.m.

A Las Vegas woman charged with child abuse and neglect for leaving her 1-year-old daughter locked inside her car overnight in the desert appeared in court this morning, where a preliminary hearing was set for next month.

Diana Ruiz, 20, is facing one felony count of child abuse and neglect after police say she left her daughter, Darci Delilah-Aubrey, inside a car for about 15 hours and didn’t contact police for help when the opportunity became available.

Ruiz appeared in front of Justice of the Peace Karen Bennett-Haron via videoconference from the Clark County Detention Center. Jail records indicate she is being held on $3,000 bail.

Bennett-Haron declined to address her custody status Tuesday, requesting time to get input from Child Protective Services. Ruiz is next set to appear Friday.

According to a Metro Police arrest report, Ruiz left her home at about midnight Thursday in her mother’s Ford Focus to see friends in Sandy Valley, which is about 45 miles southwest of Las Vegas, near the California line. She opted to take an unpaved desert road to get there instead of the highway because it was shorter, authorities said.

Ruiz told police she had only been on the route a couple of times before with her older brother, and said she had never driven it alone, the report stated. Police in the report described the road as a “trail utilized by off-road vehicles and not standard passenger vehicles.”

Ruiz contacted police at about 4 p.m. Thursday from an area near Blue Diamond and Fort Apache roads. She told detectives she had lost her vehicle in the desert with her 1-year-old locked inside and that she had been searching for the car since about midnight, the report stated.

Ruiz told police she was driving the Focus when it became stuck. She got out of the car to check on her child, who was in the backseat, and accidentally locked the doors with the girl inside and the key in the ignition, she told police.

She attempted to break the car’s window but couldn’t, she said, so she left the car to look for help, the report stated.

Ruiz told police after walking some distance she encountered a man living in a trailer who helped her look for her vehicle. They first went out in his pickup truck, but couldn't find the car, so they went back out on his all-terrain vehicle to look for the car.

The man told her she should call police, which she eventually did. She told the investigating officer that initially she didn’t want the police involved so she didn’t call for rescue assistance, the report said.

A police air unit eventually located the car by tracking the signal from Ruiz’s cell phone, which was found about eight feet away from the vehicle. When officers arrived, they found the child on the floor on the driver’s side. The car seat was on its side on the backseat, the report said. Police found scratches on the car’s windows and a beer can on the front floorboard, the report said.

The child was taken by air to University Medical Center and was found to have bruises and an elevated liver level consistent with being in a car accident. The girl was also dehydrated, police said. She was placed with CPS.

One of the doctors who treated the child at the hospital told police there was concern the child hadn’t been restrained properly in the vehicle.

When police interviewed Ruiz at UMC, she told them she had put her daughter in her car seat but hadn’t used the base because it was her mother’s car, the report said. She said that after she realized she had accidentally locked her daughter inside the car, she tried to break the window by using rocks and also by ripping the spoiler off the back of the car and trying to break the window with it. She said she was frustrated because there was no cell phone service, so she threw her phone at the vehicle and left to look for help at about 1 a.m., the report said.

She walked through the desert in the dark, looking for help, and then decided to return to the vehicle to wait for sunlight. However, she wasn’t able to retrace her steps. At that point, she encountered the man who helped her look for the car.

When asked by detectives why she didn’t contact police when she first encountered the man, she told police she wanted to find her daughter on her own and didn’t want the police involved, the report said.

Ruiz was arrested at UMC. A preliminary hearing was set for April 13.