Mihail and Anca Sabo face negligent homicide and child abuse charges after their son Theo was left in a sweltering vehicle for more than two and a half hours, and the father told police he handed the responsibility to a teenager.
Five-year-old Theo Sabo died after no one retrieved him from the family car on a 106-degree Sunday afternoon in Peoria, Arizona. His parents had just returned from a church baptism and were hosting roughly 50 friends and relatives at their home. The boy, who had fallen asleep during the ride, sat in that car while the party carried on. More than two and a half hours later, the family realized he was missing. They found him unresponsive in the vehicle outside the house.
Someone administered CPR. Theo was rushed to a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead.
Mihail Sabo, 50, and Anca Sabo, 45, were each charged with negligent homicide and child abuse. They appeared separately Monday at Maricopa County Superior Court, where a judge set bond at $150,000 apiece, the New York Post reported. The court imposed a no-contact order between the husband and wife and scheduled the next hearing for September 21.
At the center of this case sits a disputed claim. Mihail Sabo told Peoria police that after the family arrived home from the baptism, he asked his 14-year-old son to bring Theo inside from the car. The 14-year-old told police he was never asked to do any such thing.
That contradiction matters. A grown man, a father of five, told investigators he delegated the safety of a sleeping kindergartner to a teenager and then, by his own account, never checked to see whether it happened. Whether the request was made or not, the result was the same: a little boy baked in a car while dozens of adults gathered steps away.
Hot-car deaths are not new, and they are not confined to one part of the country. Earlier this year, a Connecticut father was charged after his baby son died in a hot car while the man worked on a strawberry farm. The details differ. The failure is the same: an adult left a child in a vehicle and did not go back.
Historical forecast records cited by the Post placed the temperature in Peoria that day at 106 degrees Fahrenheit. At that air temperature, the interior of a parked car can climb well past 130 degrees within minutes. Theo was in the vehicle starting around 1 p.m., the hottest stretch of the afternoon.
Leah Dodd, who represented both Mihail and Anca Sabo at their hearings, argued that criminal charges did not fit the facts. Dodd told the court the mother assumed the father would retrieve Theo, and the father passed the task to the teenager. She framed the breakdown as a tragic miscommunication, not a crime.
Dodd said during Anca Sabo's hearing:
"Mom is hosting a party at their home, assumes dad is gonna get [Theo]. Dad asks the 14-year-old. That's not asking a young child to get another child out of the vehicle."
She added that Theo "was sleeping, and there was a lot going on," and insisted the parents' conduct "does not deviate from what a normal person would do in this situation." Dodd called the negligent homicide and child abuse charges unwarranted and described the boy's death as "an unimaginable tragedy."
The defense attorney also pointed to Anca Sabo's response once the family discovered Theo in the car. Dodd told the court:
"She called 911, she administered life-saving efforts, she answered all questions of detectives. This is not someone who is running away."
Dodd said Mihail and Anca Sabo "have been married for almost 20 years and have lived in the Arizona area since 2011." The couple has four other children, ages 18, 15, 14, and 9. Both parents were granted supervised visitation with those children as a condition of their release.
Accountability for a child's death is a question that extends far beyond one Arizona courtroom. When parents lose a child to violence or neglect, the grief is universal, but so is the demand for answers about who was responsible.
The two hearings offered a sharp contrast. Anca Sabo was visibly distraught. She sobbed, clutched her chest, and wailed as the proceedings unfolded. At one point, she pleaded directly with the judge:
"I want to see my kids. Please let me see my kids."
Mihail Sabo's demeanor was different. He appeared disheveled and showed little emotion during his hearing, keeping his head low for much of the proceeding. He did not speak publicly.
Maricopa County Attorney Brooke Gaunt pushed back against the defense's framing. She told the court that Theo was in the car "for more than two and a half hours and the parents were not aware of his location during that whole time." That statement undercuts the defense argument that the situation was an ordinary parenting lapse. Two and a half hours is not a momentary oversight. It is a sustained failure of attention involving two adults and roughly 50 other people, none of whom noticed a 5-year-old was missing.
The Maricopa County Attorney's Office declined to comment further, citing the ongoing case.
Tragedies involving the death of a vulnerable person and a subsequent arrest raise hard questions about where grief ends and culpability begins. In this case, prosecutors have drawn the line clearly: they believe criminal negligence, not just bad luck, caused Theo's death.
An online fundraiser for the Sabo family described Theo as "deeply loved" and said "his precious life will never be forgotten." The fundraiser asked for prayers and support "as they walk through this unimaginable loss." The platform hosting the fundraiser was not identified.
Several questions remain unanswered. Police have not publicly addressed whether they investigated the conflicting accounts from Mihail and his 14-year-old son. It is unclear whether the charges against each parent are identical or differ in any way. The name of the hospital where Theo was pronounced dead has not been released.
Family tragedies that involve possible criminal conduct inside a home, where the people closest to the victim are also the suspects, put enormous pressure on investigators to sort grief from responsibility. Peoria police have not commented publicly on the case. The Post reached out to both the department and the defense attorney without receiving an immediate response.
Dodd stressed repeatedly that the Sabos cooperated fully with detectives and that their response after finding Theo, calling 911, performing CPR, was "standard care." She called the entire episode "a tragedy" and said she could not "overstress" that characterization.
But cooperation after the fact does not erase what happened before it. A 5-year-old boy sat in a car in 106-degree heat for more than two and a half hours while his parents entertained 50 guests a few steps away. His father's defense is that he told a teenager to handle it. The teenager says that never happened.
Theo Sabo is dead. Somebody is responsible. And "it was a tragedy" is not an answer, it is a description of the result that someone's choices produced.