Drunk father forgets three-year-old son in car

Californian police found a three-year-old abandoned in his father's car, 24 hours after the man was arrested for being drunk but failed to mention his son, police said Monday.

Dillon Kurihara was found sleeping peacefully in the vehicle in Pasadena on Sunday night, half a mile from where his 23-year-old father Joe had been detained for being intoxicated and resisting arrest Saturday night.

"He was found in his car seat, asleep and he appeared to be in good physical condition given the length of his ordeal," spokeswoman Janet Pope Givens of Pasadena police told AFP.

Officers had launched a hunt for the boy after his mother who attended a wedding at a Masonic Temple on Saturday with the boy and his father sounded the alert on Sunday morning, saying she didn't know where her son was.

"The mother told us she saw the two leave the Masonic Temple," said the spokeswoman. "We informed her that we had Kurihara in custody since Saturday evening, but her son was not with him when he was" arrested.

When they detained him, "officers had no way of knowing that he had been or was supposed to have been with Dillon. Kurihara could not recall being with the child because of his inebriated state," she said.

The father remains in custody pending payment of 100,000 dollars bail, while the boy is being cared for by the local authority's family service department, pending further investigation, said the spokeswoman.

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