Mom curses, struggles during arrest after baby left in car at local club

Samantha Grace Vaughan, 26, of Copperas Cove, struggled, cursed and hurled a racial epithet at...
Samantha Grace Vaughan, 26, of Copperas Cove, struggled, cursed and hurled a racial epithet at officers as she was arrested, an arrest warrant affidavit says. (Copperas Cove Police Dept. photo)(KWTX)
Published: Jul. 29, 2019 at 12:47 PM CDT
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Samantha Grace Vaughan, 26, of Copperas Cove, struggled, cursed and hurled a racial epithet at officers as she was arrested for leaving her infant son asleep in a running car while she went inside a local nightclub, an arrest warrant affidavit says.

Vaughan was arrested after officers responded at around 1:45 a.m. Sunday to the Trackside Night Club in the 300 block of Joe’s Road and found the infant in a safety seat in the backseat of a car.

One of the officers found Vaughan inside the club about six minutes later and officers smelled “a strong odor commonly associated with the consumption of an alcoholic beverage emitting from her person,” the affidavit released Monday says.

When officers asked her if she had consumed alcohol, she said “she had two shots,” the affidavit says.

Then she yelled, “You will not take my child and place her with a f…… (N-word),” the affidavit said.

When tested later with a preliminary breath test device at the Copperas Cove Police Department, her blood alcohol level showed to be 0.148.

The legal limit for driving in Texas is 0.08.

Vaughan told the officers she drove to the club to pick up her husband and went inside to use the bathroom, the affidavit said.

She found her husband and “sat with him while she consumed the two shots,” the affidavit says.

As officers started to take her into custody, she tried to pull away and dropped to the ground and then “continued to thrash her body around…yell and throw herself about.”

She “smashed her forehead into the steel bar (inside a patrol unit) twice, causing a small laceration to her head.

She’s facing a charge of abandoning/endangering a child with intent to return.