Bond Upheld for Pair Who Left Girls Alone : Family: Judge refuses to lower $50,000 amount for man, wife charged with abandonment. Couple told not to contact daughters, who remain in foster care.
ST. CHARLES, Ill. — A couple who left their young daughters at home alone while they flew to Mexico for a Christmas vacation were ordered held on $50,000 bond each Wednesday and told not to have any contact with the children, who remained in a foster home.
David Schoo, a 45-year-old engineer with a smoke-alarm company, and his 35-year-old homemaker wife, Sharon, face one charge each of felony child abandonment, felony cruelty to children and misdemeanor child endangerment.
The couple spent their second day in jail Wednesday after Associate Judge Richard Larson refused to lower their bonds.
An attorney for the Schoos defended them Wednesday, saying that, when the facts are known, the case would “turn out quite differently†from the public’s impression.
Gerard Kepple declined to elaborate in a brief news conference after the closed bond hearing at the Kane County Corrections Center in Geneva, Ill.
The couple had been arrested Tuesday at O’Hare International Airport after returning from a nine-day trip to Acapulco.
Eight officers paraded the couple through the airport, where travelers lined the corridor and yelled insults. Police Sgt. Jerry Thornton said the couple did not ask about their daughters at the airport, but did ask when they could get their luggage.
“We still don’t know what the real story is about why they left their kids behind,†Thornton said.
Their attorney said they were attempting to raise the bond money and had asked him Wednesday to check on the welfare of the girls.
The parents departed Dec. 20, leaving a note telling the children when to go to bed and not to answer the phone, Sheriff John Randall said. They left food but no hotel or emergency numbers, police said.
The day after they left, their 9-year-old daughter, Nicole, called 911 to report a smoke alarm going off, tipping authorities that she and her 4-year-old sister, Diana, had been left alone.
“Nobody in the neighborhood knows them very well,†said Connie Stadelmann, a neighbor who took the children in after they had called 911. “They’re real reclusive and secretive and they wanted their privacy.â€
The children spent Christmas, and received gifts, at the home of their maternal grandmother, but she later told authorities she could not care for the girls and they were placed in a foster home.
The sheriff’s department referred all calls to the Kane County state’s attorney’s office. David Clark, administrative chief for the office, declined to comment.
The Schoos are to appear before Larson for a preliminary hearing Tuesday. That is the same day Larson is to hold a custody hearing for the children.
A spokesman for the Children and Family Services Department said the agency has received calls and letters from around the nation and from as far away as Britain, some including offers to adopt the children.
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