Arraignment is scheduled Friday for 23-year-old man charged with abducting his then-4-year-old daughter and moving to Guatemala, where they lived for a year before the defendant was arrested, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Felipe Alexander Delgado was charged in September of last year with a felony count of child abduction for allegedly taking his daughter to the Central American country, Deputy District Attorney Jim Bacin said.
Delgado picked up his daughter, who is now 5, for a trip to the beach on July 26 of last year, Bacin said. He was expected to return the child to her mother that day, but she did not grow concerned until the following day when she tried to reach him via text and phone calls and he did not respond, Bacin said.
The child’s mother — estranged from Delgado at the time — previously left the girl with Delgado a short time before the alleged abduction and he returned the child within a couple of hours without incident, Bacin said.
The two did not have a formal custody agreement, although the defendant had been served with papers and a custody hearing was pending at the time of the alleged abduction, Bacin said.
The next time Delgado was left with the girl, he disappeared with her, authorities said.
The girl’s mother checked with Delgado’s family, and when they said they had not seen him or the child she filed a missing persons report with La Habra police, Bacin said.
La Habra police classified it as a child abduction after Delgado allegedly called the mother from a phone without a listed number and refused to tell her where they were, Bacin said.
It’s not clear how Delgado was arrested in Guatemala, Bacin said.
Guatemalan officials kicked Delgado out of their country and on Sept. 5 returned him to the U.S., where he posted $50,000 bail and was released, Bacin said. The girl was reunited with her mother on Aug. 28.
Bacin will ask that bail be upped to $100,000 at Friday’s hearing, he said.
If convicted at trial, Delgado could face up to three years in prison.
— City News Service