![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/faust-mug.jpg\")
article <\/p>\n article <\/p>\n
Courtesy: Punta Gorda Police Department <\/p>\n
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – A Punta Gorda man was arrested after police say he left a 2-year-old child alone in a truck, which crashed into a church playground on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The backstory:<\/p>\n
According to the Punta Gorda Police Department, Nathan Faust III, 29, of Punta Gorda, went to the Church of the Good Shepherd on Wednesday morning to drop off a two-year-old and a three-year-old at school.<\/p>\n
Investigators said Faust got out of his truck with the three-year-old to take her into the school, leaving the two-year-old in the vehicle.<\/p>\n
Police said the truck started moving forward with the child inside, restrained only by a seat belt.<\/p>\n
It traveled about 25 yards, went through a ditch and a fence and ended up in the church playground area, according to PGPD.<\/p>\n
There were no children in the playground area at the time of the crash.<\/p>\n
Dig deeper:<\/p>\n
Police said Faust broke out a window in the vehicle and got the two-year-old child, who was uninjured, out of the truck.<\/p>\n
Faust then drove the truck out of the playground, returned the two-year-old to the day care, and left the scene of the crash, according to police.<\/p>\n
Investigators said Faust was located shortly after the crash and charged with neglect of a child without great bodily harm, and leaving the scene of a crash involving property damage.<\/p>\n
The Source: This article was written with information from the Punta Gorda Police Department via a press release.<\/p>\n
Florida<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article Courtesy: Punta Gorda Police Department PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – A Punta Gorda man was arrested after police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[630,47,28,30,29,115,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-235357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-crime-publicsafety","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}