Utah father, 41, arrested after he 'abandoned his 5-year-old daughter outside a college campus for hours in near-freezing temperatures'.

A Utah father was arrested after he was caught on surveillance video abandoning his five-year-old daughter on a college campus in near-freezing temperatures.

Adrian Justin Sanchez, 41, is facing a felony charge of child abuse by abandonment after leaving daughter Acelynn outside with just a few blankets.

Authorities said he took Acelynn to the Ogden Weber Applied Technology College around 5am and then walked away. Temperatures were around 39 degrees.


Acelynn was found by a security guard at 7.30am and reunited with her mother Gena Weaver.

'She told me she didn't think anybody was ever going to find her and that she was never going to see me again,' Weaver, 36, told Inside Edition.

Sanchez, who has visitation rights, had called Weaver on October 8 and said he wanted Acelynn to spend the night at the house he shares with his mother in Ogden.

But that night he allegedly wanted to bring his little girl to a nearby house where he planned to do drugs.

When Sanchez's mother refused to let him go, he 'tore up' her room, Weaver said. 

'When she woke up that morning, she noticed he and Acelynn were gone.' 

Acelynn told her mother that Sanchez woke her up in the middle of the night and attempted to break into two separate homes, Weaver told KUTV.

The surveillance footage shows Acelynn, who was just wearing pajama leggings, a shirt and shoes, making a makeshift bed with her blankets before briefly falling asleep. 


Weaver said she was also angry to hear that Sanchez was already out on bail, adding that he was 'grown man' who 'needs to take responsibilities for himself'.

The mother added that Acelynn has been traumatized by the incident.

'She's very strong and brave, she holds a smile when she's around other people, but when she's home, she breaks down,' Weaver said.

'She doesn't want to be in any room by herself. Before, she was sleeping in her own bed in her own room. Now, she sleeps in my bed every night.'

Now the mother said she is pursuing a protective order against Sanchez and hopes his parental rights will be taken away.

'I'm not letting her go there ever again, and I want him to be charged with every single thing possible,' she said.

'I don't want him to get a slap on the hand. She could've been killed. She had to lie on the cold ground that night. She was left in the dark.'

'No child deserves to be left in the dark.'