Dad Shops for Porn, Leaves Baby in Car

By William Daniel Staff Writer


DALLAS PIKE — A Houston, Pa. man has been charged with child neglect/creating a risk of injury after leaving his16-month-old child inside a locked vehicle while he was shopping at an adult bookstore.

Cpl. Tim Gessler of the Ohio County Sheriff Department arrested Richard Allen Shultz, 23, of Houston, Pa.

According to a sheriff’s department report, dispatch received a call at 6:10 p.m. Saturday that a child had been left unattended in a car at Fritz the Cat Adult Bookstore in Dallas Pike. When Gessler arrived, he found a child “screaming and crying” in a child seat in the back seat of a 2000 Plymouth Breeze parked at the bookstore. The temperature at the time was in the mid-80s.

According to Gessler, the doors were locked and the windows were up. However, a front window was rolled down far enough that Gessler could reach in the car and unlock the door.

A volunteer fireman from the Clearview Fire Department was on the scene and tended to the 16-month-old child. Officials from the Department of Health and Human Resources told Gessler to have the child taken to Wheeling Hospital for treatment. A Valley Grove Volunteer Fire Department ambulance transported the child to the hospital.

The child’s mother was summoned to Wheeling to tend to her child. DHHR officials released the child to the mother after the toddler received treatment at Wheeling Hospital

Deputy Espejo, who was also at the scene, talked with an employee of Fritz the Cat who said Shultz entered the store, left, then came back. Shultz said he did this after realizing the store didn’t accept credit or debit cards for payment and was only in the store for about 10 minutes.

In a voluntary written statement, Shultz said that he “made an honest mistake that will not happen again.”