An Augusta father is facing the same charge as McDonald’s dad Chris Louis for also leaving his son unattended at a local business.
Elliott McBride, 32, was charged Thursday with deprivation of a minor for an incident at Pull-A-Part, a used auto parts store on Sand Bar Ferry Road.
The retail manager said a customer alerted her that a 3-year-old boy was sitting outside in the back of an old Toyota Camry with the windows down and playing on a cell phone. It was just before 4 p.m., and the boy was sweating in the 88-degree heat, according to a sheriff’s report.
The manager got the boy some water and watched him for 10 minutes before RCSO Cpl. Kevin Cheillada responded. A worker for the business tried to locate the boy’s parents and eventually found McBride and his girlfriend, 25-year-old Cassandra Murphy.
From the officer’s report: “I informed McBride that it was not acceptable to leave a 3-year-old child in a hot vehicle unattended while he and his girlfriend looked for car parts inside the business. McBride claimed that they had only been gone for 10 minutes and that child was not allowed in the business. However, neither McBride nor Murphy chose to stay with the child; they both re-entered the business, leaving (the child) alone in the vehicle.”
A log-in for the business showed the couple checked in at 3:35, which was 21 minutes before the officer arrived. The child was alone for at least 35 minutes, the report says.
“While I was trying to gather information for (the victim) from McBride, he stated that he did not know how to spell his child’s name or the year of his birth,” the corporal noted in his report.
Officers tried to call DFACS and were unsuccessful after six calls. The child’s mother was reached at work and came to pick up the child. McBride and Murphy were both arrested for deprivation of a minor.
The arrest comes just two weeks after the Augusta arrest of Chris Louis sparked a national debate when he left three children inside McDonald’s on March 22 and claimed he was at a job interview. A subsequent investigation showed Lewis had contacted a business earlier that day about a job but was not interviewing when the children were left alone at the fast-food restaurant. They were ages 10, 6 and 1.
A GoFundMe page set up by former NFL player Antonio Brown has raised over $83,000 for Louis. “I know he shouldn’t just leave his kids, but some people don’t have the means for babysitting, etc.,” Brown wrote on the fundraising page.
Unlike Louis, who appears to have no criminal record, McBride has a long criminal record of domestic violence, theft, assault, DUI, fleeing police and more.
McBride is the same Evans shoplifter that led Columbia County deputies on a two-county chase in 2023 before crashing and abandoning his vehicle and his 8-year-old son, authorities said. He served less than eight months of a eight-year sentence before being released last summer from a Georgia prison.
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