Off-duty cop ‘leaves his eight-year-old daughter NAKED in car outside bar’

An unsettling body camera video has emerged showing deputies discovering a police officer’s eight-year-old daughter sitting naked and alone in the backseat of his car outside a North Carolina bar last fall. 

Lt Matthew Malone, with the Wilmington Police Department, had been suspended from duty earlier this month following an internal investigation into the incident that took place in October 2019, but he returned to work on Tuesday.

The incident, which was first covered by the station WECT, began unfolding on October 19, 2019, when a man called 911 saying a child was locked inside a car screaming for help.

Bystanders called 911 to report seeing the girl relieving herself in the nude in the middle of a parking lot outside the Ogden Tap Room bar

Lt Matthew Malone (pictured) and his wife were at the bar enjoying an Oktoberfest celebration while their daughter was in the backseat of their car 

New Hanover County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Jerry Brewer said at the time the eight-year-old girl was completely naked and wrapped in a blanket, while Malone, who was off duty, and his wife were inside the Ogden Tap Room bar enjoying an Oktoberfest celebration.

WECT took the City of Wilmington to court demanding the release of the body camera footage that shows sheriff’s deputies responding to the 911 call and finding Malone’s daughter nude in his car. 

A judge sided with the station after ruling that the video’s release was in the public interest. 

However, large portions of the video featuring children’s faces and voices have been redacted to protect their privacy.  

Malone told deputies his child’s clothes got wet from going down a slide in the rain, so she asked to take them off in the car. The off-duty cop said he wrapped the girl in a blanket and let her sleep at her request  

In the recording clocking in at just over 31 minutes, a bystander tells responding sheriff’s deputies that he saw the child 20 minutes prior emerge naked from the vehicle to relieve herself in the parking lot and asking passersby for help before returning to the car. 

A few minutes later, the father, Matthew Malone, emerges from the bar and approaches the deputies, who greet him in a friendly manner suggesting familiarity. 

‘Is she not sleeping anymore?’ Malone asks a deputy, referring to his daughter. 

The father goes on to explain that his daughter’s clothes got wet from going down a slide in the rain, so she asked to take them off in the car.

Malone says he wrapped the child in a blanket, and at her request allowed her to take a nap in the backseat. 

No charges were ever brought against Malone, seen above walking with his daughter, but he had been suspended without pay for two weeks in early January 

‘I said, “No problem, go to sleep,”‘ he tells the deputies, before casually adding, ‘sorry about that.’     

The case was later referred to the Department of Social Services, but in the end no charges were brought against Malone or his wife after the sheriff’s office and prosecutors concluded that the incident did not rise to the level of child neglect or abuse.

District attorney Ben David stressed that the prosecutor who reviewed the case did not know Malone was a police lieutenant, arguing that his profession played no role in the decision to not file charges against him.

The Wilmington Police Department completed its internal investigation earlier this month and suspended Malone without pay for two weeks.