Wife of late ABC News producer Dax Tejera hit with kid-endanger raps, she insists she was monitoring children

The wife of late ABC producer Dax Tejera was arrested hours after her husband’s fatal heart attack for allegedly endangering their daughters, but insisted Monday she continued to monitor the young girls over camera after she left them behind in a Manhattan hotel to rush to the hospital with her husband.

Tejera, a 37-year-old producer with “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” died on Dec. 23 and police were called later that night to The Yale Club at 50 Vanderbilt Ave. over a report of unattended children, according to authorities.

The NYPD said Monday a preliminary investigation “revealed that a 2-year-old female and a 5-month-old female were left alone inside of a hotel room for an extended period of time.”

Their mother and widow Veronica Tejera was later charged with counts of “acting in a manner injurious to a child,” according to police.

Veronica explained in a statement when her husband collapsed, she accompanied him to the hospital and called her parents and a close friend to watch the couple’s two girls as she monitored the infants while they slept.

“I asked both a close friend and my parents to rush to my children’s hotel room to attend to them as I monitored them by camera. The hotel would not allow my friend in and instead called the NYPD,” she stated.

“We had two cameras trained on my children as they slept, and I monitored them closely in the time I was away from them. While the girls were unharmed, I realize that it was a poor decision.”

Veronica was given a desk-appearance ticket and will have to appear in criminal court at a future date.

Dax Tejera was an executive producer on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

His death was announced in an internal email at ABC News on Dec. 24 by division President Kim Godwin, who noted his “energy, passion and love” for his work, according to reports.

“My family and I are devastated by Dax’s sudden passing. He has left behind a heartbroken family, and two daughters he loved with all his heart,” Veronica said in the Monday statement, adding “Our family has suffered a terrible tragedy. I respectfully ask for privacy while my children and I mourn Dax’s death.”

Tejera joined ABC News in 2017 as a senior producer before being promoted to the executive producer of Stephanopoulos’ show in February 2020, his LinkedIn profile states.

He previously worked for five years at NBC as a researcher, editor and then producer and for four years as an executive producer on “America with Jorge Ramos” on Fusion Media Network.

He graduated from Dartmouth with a bachelor’s in history before attending Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.