A baby forgotten inside an SUV died after his family failed to take the toddler out of the sports vehicle while unloading the groceries they had been out shopping for.
The 11 month old baby died on Wednesday, authorities revealed, due to the unbearable heat inside the car. According to Gregory Solowsky, Lauderhill police spokesman, the family had just returned home after a shopping spree and the parents together with their four other children began unloading the many groceries they had purchased. The vehicle remained parked outside the family’s Fort Lauderdale home.
“It took about an hour for someone in the family to say, ‘Hey where’s the 11 month old?’” Solowsky said.
Sadly, temperatures often exceed 30 degrees Celsius in Lauderdale, and the baby remained in the hot vehicle for at least 60 minutes until anyone noticed its absence. The parents rushed outside to retrieve the baby, but sadly he was already unresponsive. Despite performing CPR, the toddler was declared dead after being transported to the Plantation General hospital.
According to Solowsky, the family was fully cooperative and it seems at this point that the entire event was nothing more than a tragic accident. Upon the arrival of emergency medical teams, the toddler’s parents were still administering CPR.
Solowsky added that authorities were still in the process of piecing the circumstances of the toddler’s death together and of corroborating timelines in order to perfectly understand what had occurred.
It is still unknown whether the parents will be facing any charges.
Heatstroke is one of the leading causes of toddler deaths in the summer. In 2015 alone, nine children have died as a result of vehicular heatstroke. Statistics show that, on average, 38 children die yearly from vehicular heatstroke and more than half of those cases occur as a result of their caregiver’s negligence.
Left in the sun, a vehicle can heat up 20 degrees over the course of 10 minutes. Such temperature swings are almost always fatal for young children.
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