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Team coverage Prosecutors today filed charges against a father for leaving his son in a locked car Saturday so he could make the late-night showing of "The Dark Knight."
The 23-year-old man turned down our interview request, so he is not talking with the media. But a YouTube video clip, which runs about four minutes, speaks for itself.
In it, Farnham talks about how he finished college but didn't do the necessary paperwork to graduate saying he was "too lazy to do it."
He also talks about and shows his 2-year-old son Justin, the same boy who was left in a hot car Saturday night for nearly two hours while, according to police, David was inside a cool movie theater catching the latest installment of Batman. In the video he says, "I have a 2-year-old son that you guys might see some video of if my extended family pressures me enough."The entire clip is an odd assortment of musings and, sadly, a prediction. Farnham says, "Just want to give you guys an introduction, so later on, you guys can actually have something to reference back to when you guys are like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?'" At one point he also said, "Be warned, be prepared, because if there's anything I know, it's how to get attention."
On his MySpace page, he says he's working on a screenplay and stealing Internet using a neighbor's unsecured wireless network.
David Farnham was booked into the Salt Lake County jail on second-degree felony child abuse, but formal charges have since been filed today by the District Attorney's Office. Farnham has been charged with a class A misdemeanor child abuse. Robert Parrish, deputy district attorney for Salt Lake County, said, "What we look at is: What were they aware of? Did they know of the risk? Did they disregard the risk and proceed to do whatever it was they wanted to do even though they knew about the risk? Or was it truly just an accident?
"Our child abuse statute specifically has a definition for inflicting condition upon the child that impinges on the child's health, safety, or welfare. If you do it intentionally it's a class A misdemeanor."
If found guilty, Farnham could face up to a year in jail.
He's certainly been the target of quite a bit of public humiliation; others had found the YouTube video before us and posted nasty remarks about Farnham allegedly leaving his child in a car.
Police also tell us as they were arresting him, moviegoers were yelling obscenities at him.
Police say they don't know why Farnham left his son in the car, only that he did.
Earlier today, Farnham's video blog on YouTube had a little more than 40 hits. Tonight, he's gotten more than 200.
E-mail: lprichard@ksl.com
E-mail: corton@ksl.com
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
