The wife of ABC News producer Dax Tejera is speaking out about her child endangerment charges after her husband died suddenly 2 weeks ago.
Veronica Tejera, 33, was arrested and charged with two counts of child endangerment for leaving their 2 daughters alone in a hotel room on Dec. 23, the same day her husband died of a fatal heart attack at age 37.
The Tejeras left their 2-year-old and 5-month-old daughters alone in a room at the members-only Yale Club in NYC.
The couple left their hotel at 8 p.m. to join another couple for dinner at a steakhouse around the corner, according to the New York Post.
A source at the restaurant said the couple “weren’t there long” before Dax began to show signs of distress around 10 p.m.
“So, before anyone ate, just after the server brought the orders, he asked, ‘Are you ok sir?'” the staffer told The Post.
Dax “got up and started walking like he was going to the men’s room, but he made a right instead and went out the front door and the server followed him outside,” he said.
“The server said that he collapsed in the corner, right here outside the restaurant,” the staffer said.
Veronica asked a friend to collect her children at the hotel before she rode in the ambulance with her husband, who was pronounced dead.
She said hotel security wouldn’t allow the non-member inside the room. Veronica also sent her parents to the hotel to gather the children.
Around 11 p.m. that night, police responded to a 911 call regarding “unattended children inside of 50 Vanderbilt Avenue.”
An NYPD spokesperson said officers arrived to find the 2 babies were left alone in a room at the swanky hotel “for an extended period of time.”
Veronica Tejera explained to police that she monitored the infants on an app on her husband’s cell phone the whole time. Police said she left her cell phone in the hotel room.
“When Dax collapsed on December 23rd, I accompanied him in an ambulance to the hospital. I asked both a close friend and my parents to rush to my children’s hotel room to attend to them as I monitored them by camera,” she said. “The hotel would not allow my friend in and instead called the NYPD.”
Veronica told Entertainment Tonight and the New York Post that she made a “poor decision” to leave her children alone.
