After leaving him in a hot car outside their house for hours while preparing for her daughter’s birthday party, a five-year-old boy died in a Texas suburb on Monday.
Cops claimed the mom and other child, an eight-year-old girl, were out running errands for the party when they returned to the Harris County home, and that the mom and other child, an eight-year-old girl, exited the vehicle and entered the house.
The boy, on the other hand, remained strapped to his seat in the back.
The mom realized the boy had been left alone for three hours, according to investigators, but it was too late by then.
At 2 p.m., the unfortunate incident was reported to the police. On a day when the temperature reached 101 degrees, the car was parked outside the family’s home just outside Houston.
The mother, who police say left the boy behind inadvertently, has yet to be recognized or charged.
‘Between maybe two to three hours, the mom noticed that the other 5-year-old wasn’t nowhere to be found,’ Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said Monday of the incident, which is currently being investigated by his police force.
‘She began calling for him, but no answer. She frantically ran outside and discovered the 5-year-old still buckled in his car seat.’
The sheriff went on to reveal that the mom told investigators that boy knew how to unbuckle himself and get out of a car, and likely assumed that the child did exactly that.
However, Gonzalez said that investigators say the black SUV was a rental, and that the child’s unfamiliarity with vehicle’s safety locks may have played a part into the incident.
‘It appears that the child routinely knows how to unbuckle himself from the toddler’s seat and open the door, but on this occasion, it didn’t happen,’ Gonzalez told press gathered in the normally quit cul-de-sac Monday evening.
He added that ‘the door did not have any kind of child safety lock enacted or anything like that.’
Medical examiners have yet to disclose a cause of death, but Gonzalez believes the boy died of heat stroke due to the conditions.
Temperatures in the Texas town topped 100 degrees that afternoon, with the heat inside the closed truck possibly reaching 120 degrees.
In a confined automobile, temperatures may quickly rise to 113 degrees in just 10 minutes.
According to police, the mother contacted 911 as soon as she discovered the boy, who was lifeless. The infant was pronounced dead by emergency officials who arrived on the scene.
In hot weather, cars can quickly heat up from the inside, according to Amber Rollins, head of the non-profit Kids and Car Safety.
‘Most people don’t realize that the majority of the increase in temperature inside of a car happens within the first 10 minutes,’ Rollins said. ‘Their little bodies heat up 3 to 5 times faster than an adult.’
Meanwhile, Texas has the highest rate of hot car deaths in the country.
The Lone Star State is responsible for 56 percent of all unintentional hot car accidents in the country, as well as 26 percent of all occurrences in which a child is stuck in a car and can’t get out.