A Marion County dad is in jail, accused of leaving his three young children in the car for four hours while he went drinking.
Police say they found 28-year-old Keith Delong laying in the parking lot of Dr. B's in Ocala, bleeding from his head after a confrontation with an angry patron at the bar.
According to the police report, a woman outside the bar noticed the children in an unattended Cadillac in the parking lot, and entered the bar to ask patrons who owned the vehicle.
“I saw there were 3 children in the car calling for their dad so I went inside the bar and questioned the gentleman sitting at the bar and he said they could be his,” said Heather Weiss.
The oldest of those kids was just 8 years old, with his 7-year-old brother and 5-year-old sister were backseat. Weiss said the boy was in the front seat with the keys in the ignition, honking on the horn and yelling for his Dad at 1:30 a.m.
The bar's security team went out to check the parking lot when they discovered the children honking the car's horn.
“When you are looking at a kid and they are sitting there crying to you," Weiss said. "And you can see that they are tired, they are hot, they are sweaty, they’ve been in the car for so long, you want to do the right thing and get them out of that situation.”
A member of the security team, Chris Chung, located the father and walked him out to his car to verify the children were his.
Witnesses say Delong attempted to drive away and appeared intoxicated to Chung who delayed Delong by attempting to talk him out of driving while Chung contacted law enforcement. The children were removed from the car, and officers said the woman who first spotted them in the vehicle stayed with them on the scene.
At this point, according to the police report, an angry patron struck Delong in the head during his altercation with security.
Shortly after, police arrived to find Delong laying in the parking lot, bleeding from his head.
The children told police this wasn't a first-time occurrence; they said they were left in the car quite often.
Delong told police a group of unknown males approached him him inside the bar and were yelling, accusing him of leaving his kids in his car outside. Delong says those men took him outside and several of them proceeded to hit him.
Officers say Delong told them he didn't arrive to the bar with his kids, and that their mother must've dropped them off, leaving them in his car without his knowledge. The children's mother said Delong had custody for the past five days. Delong's mother even confirmed having dinner with Delong and the children prior to his arrival to the bar.
Delong was arrested on three charges of child neglect without great bodily harm. He bonded out of jail Thursday night.