SALT LAKE CITY — A father was arrested Thursday after abandoning his teenage son at a gas station in Nephi, telling the boy he needed a break from him, according to police.
Mark Yates was booked into the Juab County Jail for investigation of child abandonment and reckless endangerment.
On Tuesday, Nephi police found a 13-year-old boy crying at a gas station, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt with no shoes or jacket, according to a police affidavit.
“The boy said that his father left him at the gas station and drove away,” the affidavit states. “He said that his dad said that he was too much and needed a break from him.”
The boy also told police that his father was trying to buy marijuana that night because they thought it was legal in Utah, and the boy was reading directions off his phone to get to a marijuana shop.
“He said that the phone said that it was 110 miles from that hotel they were staying at. He said that his dad got mad at him because he misread the directions and they missed an exit to the marijuana shop, which is when his dad dropped him off at the gas station and left,” the affidavit states.
The boy said he and his father have been living in a van and hotels, going from state to state, and have lived in 10 or 11 states over the past five years, according to the affidavit. But the boy did not tell police his father’s name because he didn’t want to get him in trouble.
“I called the mother who was very upset, and said that she would come get him but it would take her a couple days since she lives in Louisiana. I told her that her son would be placed in state custody if we could not locate the father or a family member,” an officer wrote in the report.
The mother gave police Yates’ name. As social workers were responding to the area to get the boy, police were notified that a Spanish Fork police officer had stopped Yates on I-15. He was arrested by Spanish Fork police for investigation of DUI, and later transferred to the Juab County Jail for the child abandonment case.