Father Is on Suicide Watch After Baby Left in Van Dies

A man suspected of leaving his 5-month-old daughter in a sweltering minivan was so distraught by her death that he tried to grab an officer’s gun in an apparent suicide attempt shortly before he was arrested, police said Friday.

At the hospital -- where firefighters had rushed baby Jasmine on Thursday -- John Michael Dunton, 42, said he forgot that his daughter was in the car. He tried to grab an officer’s gun; doctors used a sedative to calm him, police said.

“He was certainly distraught,” said Santa Ana Lt. Bill Tegler. “He went to work and forgot to take the baby to the baby sitter. His routine was to take her to the baby sitter, and he forgot.”

He is on suicide watch, held at Santa Ana Jail on suspicion of willful harm or injury to a child, Tegler said. His bail was set at $100,000 and his arraignment is scheduled Tuesday.

Police said Dunton, a part-time paralegal and Anaheim resident, parked the minivan at a lot in Santa Ana about noon Thursday and went to work. When he got off work about 5 p.m., he found Jasmine, strapped in her car seat, her face, arms and legs flushed.

He called paramedics, who rushed her to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. She died of heat stroke. Temperatures reached 92 on Thursday, police said. Inside the van an hour after the baby was found, it was 103 degrees, police said.

Thursday’s case was tragically similar to an incident last August, when UC Irvine professor Mark Warschauer, 50, forgot his 10-month-old son in a hot car while working in his office. Michael Kai Warschauer was in the car for more than three hours and died from hyperthermia.

His father, vice chairman of UC Irvine’s Department of Education, forgot to drop him off at the university’s day-care center. He was never arrested and the district attorney’s office called the death a tragic mistake. It declined to prosecute, because charges are usually not filed when a parent with no history of abuse or negligence accidentally leaves a child behind.

In Thursday’s case, Dunton was jailed. Police acknowledged the similarities in the cases and do not believe the baby was intentionally left behind, but, “There are some differences, and we think those differences are significant,” Tegler said.

He would not say what the differences were, citing the ongoing investigation. The district attorney’s office will determine Monday whether charges will be filed.

Dunton’s friends said they were shocked at the death, because the had couple doted on their daughter.

“I nearly threw up when I saw it on television,” said John Morad, a friend and Dunton’s former landlord. “It’s not John. He loved that baby to death.”

Dunton, who has worked at a Santa Ana law firm for more than 10 years, rented a one bedroom apartment from Morad, but moved two months ago because the couple needed an additional room for Jasmine.

Morad ate dinner with the Duntons one night before the incident. She was the couple’s first child, he said.

Dunton also has a 6-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. He often took the family to Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm, friends said.

“He’s a family man,” Morad said. “This is a freak thing. There’s no way he’d go to his office knowing that baby was in the car. I’m sure he’s suffering right now.”

Dunton often took the baby to the baby-sitter’s house or watched her himself when his wife, Jennie, worked 12-hour shifts as a nurse at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Morad said. “We often volunteered to baby sit, but they were very possessive of their baby,” Morad said.

Earlier in the summer, the couple traveled to the Philippines to visit Jennie Dunton’s family. According to court records, Dunton was convicted in Los Angeles in 1982 and 1983 of check forgery.

Dunton also played a minor role in the O.J. Simpson case. He told prosecutors that two people were involved in the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman, and that a third person may have witnessed the crime. He refused to testify, saying that he feared for his safety, and was jailed for a month.

Times staff writer Anna Gorman contributed to this report.