Ogden police find 5 children locked in shed while searching for father
By: Ogden, UT - Body camera footage shows the moments when Ogden police officers found five children locked inside an outdoor shed while trying to serve an arrest warrant on their father last month.
On Nov. 15, Ogden police responded to a local business for a theft call involving 28-year-old Gabriela Salgado-Estrada and her five children under the age of 6, according to a police affidavit.
The affidavit reported that Estrada “placed new, unpaid-for items on several of the children” while she was in the store.
“The children then took the tags off of those items, and Gabriela made no attempt to pay for them,” the affidavit stated. “She also placed items in the shopping cart, underneath a child carrier, that were not paid for. The unpaid items totaled just over $200.”
Police arrested Gabriela at the store and later booked her into the Weber County Jail on suspicion of retail theft, a class B misdemeanor.
According to the affidavit, the children’s father arrived at the store to pick up the five children. The man gave police a Mexican ID with the name Omar Garcia and left the scene with the children.
Police soon discovered that the ID was fake and that the man was 36-year-old Wilber Rojas, who had an active third-degree felony and a class C misdemeanor arrest warrant.
According to the affidavit, officers went to the home address that the couple provided to police. Officers reported finding Rojas’s truck, which he used to pick up the children, outside the address.
“Contact was made with residents who were uncooperative, but stated that Wilber was not at the residence. A search warrant was obtained for the home for the apprehension of Wilber,” the affidavit stated. “The warrant was served and, multiple times, Wilber was called out by police.”
While searching the property, body camera footage showed officers finding a backyard shed locked from the outside by a bolt lock and a cord. Officers cut the cord, unlocked the door, and asked anyone inside the shed to come out.
The footage showed the four children walking to the door, with two of them partially clothed. The officers began escorting them out, with one of the children trying to reenter the shed to retrieve the infant still in the cradle.
One of the officers picked up the infant and took them to a relative who was waiting outside the residence.
“Why are (the children) locked in the shed?” the Ogden PD officer asked the relative. “They couldn’t get out. They were locked from the outside in.”
“They shouldn’t be in there,” the relative responded.
About 30 minutes later, the body camera footage showed officers locating Rojas hiding in an abandoned vehicle in the backyard. Officers fired a bean-bag round at the car in an effort to get Rojas out of the car.
Rojas complied with the officer’s commands and was arrested without further incident.
According to the affidavit, the backyard shed was made of wood and had an electrical heater inside, without a “means of escape should a fire start in the shed.”
Rojas was booked into the Weber County Jail on suspicion of class A misdemeanor child abuse, providing a police officer with false information, and interfering with a police officer.
On Tuesday, Rojas pleaded guilty to an unrelated third-degree felony of having a fake ID when he attempted to open a bank account with a fraudulent Social Security card in February.