METRO POLICE
Edwardo Zepeda
Friday, June 28, 2019 | 7:25 p.m.
By the time Metro Police found the little girl during a search in the middle of the night, she was lying next to a utility box. Her yellow shirt and floral bottoms were powdered with dirt and stained with soot.
When the pig-tailed 4-year-old awoke, she told police that her father had left her because he disliked her and that he would hit her, according to an arrest report.
That father is Edwardo Zepeda, who officers found disoriented and drunk looking for his daughter in the early morning hours of June 19, police said. His eyes were bloodshot, his speech slurred, and he reeked of alcohol, police said.
The 36-year-old remains jailed at the Clark County Detention Center on one count of child neglect or abuse, logs show.
A convenience store clerk called 911 shortly after 2 a.m. to report that a man had entered the store in the 2200 block of West Charleston Boulevard and was looking for his child, police said. The woman recalled that father and daughter had gone into the business less than two hours before and that the man had tried buying a case of beer.
But his card was declined, and he instead grabbed a couple of bags of chips and left, police said. However, he returned, asking if the woman had seen the girl.
He walked off, so the clerk clocked out and followed him to a nearby shopping center, police said. When the woman asked Zepeda where he’d last seen his daughter, he pointed to a bar, according to the report.
Police showed up, and an officer found the girl nearby — 751 S. Rancho Drive — about 45 minutes after the 911 call, police said. Zepeda said that he and his daughter had arrived in the area on a bus and had been walking around.
Police wrote that they arrested Zepeda because he “was so intoxicated to the point where he had no memory of where he last saw (redacted) and stated that she ‘disappeared.’” And because the girl was “found sleeping alone, covered in dirt and soot a (2:47 a.m),” according to the report.
Clark County Child Protective Services was consulted and the child was turned over to an unidentified woman known to the girl, the report said.
