LAKE CITY — The father of a 16-month-old little girl suspected of dying after being left in a car Tuesday is an assistant public defender in Lake City while the child’s mom is an assistant state attorney, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The mother is Third Circuit Assistant State Attorney Wendy Timonera Kwon, and the father, Assistant Public Defender Young Kwon.
Initial information provided to responding Columbia County sheriff’s deputies indicated the father forgot to take the girl to day care Tuesday morning and did not discover her until he returned home Tuesday afternoon, according to the FDLE.
Deputies went to 111 SW Stafford Court, a residential address, after a 911 call came in at 3:14 p.m., the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office reported.
The caller said the child had been in a car and was no longer breathing. Deputies arrived with Columbia County Fire Rescue officials and discovered the body.
“The suspicion is the child had been in the car,” Cpl. Murray Smith, a CCSO spokesman, told The Sun Tuesday. “From what I understand, the parent had forgot to drop the child off at day care, and the baby was in the car all day.”
The sheriff’s office requested that FDLE handle the investigation because the agency regularly works with the prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices.
A staff member for State Attorney Jeff Seigmeister said he will not comment on the incident, on Wendy Kwon’s work status or whether he would request the case be transferred to a different circuit should charges be warranted.
FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said the investigation on the child’s death is still underway.
“We’re still in the process of conducting interviews, and forensics are still being done,” Plessinger said, adding that the length of the investigation “depends on what we find as those things come back.”
“Young and Wendy are both wonderful parents, absolutely wonderful, and my heart goes out to both of them,” Public Defender Blair Payne told the Florida Times-Union newspaper. Payne refused comment to The Associated Press.