ABC News producer Dax Tejera and his wife left their two young daughters alone in their room at a members-only Midtown club to go out to a nearby steakhouse — before he suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack, sources told The Post on Tuesday.
His widow Veronica Tejera, 33, was arrested just hours later on Dec. 23 and charged with child endangerment for leaving the girls, who are five months and two years old, unattended at the Yale Club on 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, police said.
The mom said in a statement that when her husband collapsed, she accompanied him to the hospital and called her parents and a close friend to watch the kids — “as I monitored them by camera.”
She claimed the hotel wouldn’t allow her friend in and called the NYPD instead.
But sources said the children were left unattended for much longer while the two went out on the town at the popular Bobby Van’s Steakhouse, about a 15 minute walk from the private club, before Dax Tejera, 37, collapsed on their way back.
“It’s not clear if they had dinner or cocktails, but it happened when they were walking back to the hotel,” a police source told The Post.
Veronica Tejera, who lives in Delaware, was busted after cops received a 911 call at 11 p.m. over “unattended children” at the Yale Club hotel.
She claims that she monitored the girls over a camera as they slept.
“We had two cameras trained on my children as they slept, and I monitored them closely in the time I was away from them,” she said. “While the girls were unharmed I realize that it was a poor decision.”
She was given a desk appearance ticket and is due in Manhattan Criminal Court January 12.
Dax Tejera, a producer with “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” joined the network news team in 2017 as a senior producer and joined his current show in February 2020.
He previously worked as a researcher at NBC and at Fusion Media Network.
He graduated from Dartmouth College with a history degree and later attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
