Background: A child (whose face is blurred) can be seen in a van at Pawnee Lake in Nebraska (Izabella Glover/KOLN/YouTube). Inset: Mayde McGuire (Lincoln Police Department).
A police captain in Nebraska continues to face legal trouble after authorities say she locked her 2-year-old daughter in a van while she was fishing with her partner, resulting in the toddler screaming for help.
Mayde McGuire, 54, was cited for misdemeanor child abuse along with her partner, 49-year-old Mary Tobiassen, the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office announced at the time. McGuire is a captain with the Lincoln Police Department, as Law&Crime previously reported.
The two defendants have since been formally charged with misdemeanor child abuse, according to Lincoln CBS affiliate KOLN.
On Aug. 23, Izabella Glover and Braydon Nichols went to go fishing on Pawnee Lake in Lancaster County, Nebraska. As they did so, however, they heard a child screaming.
"It was a child in distress. It wasn't a child just wanting to get out of something they didn't want to do, like it was a child that was … they wanted their parents. They didn't know what was going on," Glover recounted to the local TV station.
The screams captured the couple's attention, and they took a picture. The photo shared by KOLN shows the 2-year-old child in the front seat of a van with tinted windows. Glover said she didn't see the girl's hands "until she put her hands against the window."
The toddler had apparently "crawled over" the back seats to get to the front of the vehicle — where the windows weren't as tinted — and started banging for help.
The witnesses called 911.
By the time deputies with the sheriff's office showed up at about 4 p.m., McGuire had reportedly removed her daughter from the vehicle.
McGuire — off-duty at the time — and Tobiassen had allegedly left the girl inside the van for about 25 minutes; the vehicle wasn't running, its windows were up, and the temperature outside was nearing 80 degrees.
Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner stressed how even when outdoor temperatures "may not seem extreme," the temperature inside a vehicle "can rise quickly." He added: "Children should never be left unattended in a vehicle."
Deputies spoke with McGuire and Tobiassen. The investigators say they tested McGuire for alcohol consumption, and "a preliminary breath test" allegedly showed a result of 0.11, more than the legal limit of 0.08.
The defendants are set to be arraigned in court on Wednesday.
A March 2023 press release from the Lincoln Police Department says McGuire began her career with the agency in 1998 as a patrol officer. She "consistently worked her way up the ranks" and was made a captain in 2011. She also managed the department's Emergency Communications Center and oversaw the Education and Personnel Unit.