Recently Adopted 2-Month-Old Baby Dies After Being Forgotten In a Hot Car for Hours
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The community of an East County neighborhood in Santee, San Diego, is grappling with the heart-wrenching death of a 2-month-old girl who was tragically left in a car for several hours on June 13. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department is actively investigating the incident, which has left the local community and the infant’s family in profound grief.
On the evening of the tragedy, the scene at the family’s home on Settle Road was one of urgency and chaos as depicted in a video recorded by a neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera. The footage captured the rapid arrival of multiple police officers and first responders. “They were in there a minute, two minutes maybe. Then they left, so we knew something bad happened,” the neighbor recounted to NBC 7, choosing to remain anonymous.
Responding to a distressing 911 call that morning, deputies found the baby girl unresponsive in an SUV parked outside the home. According to investigators, she had been in the hot vehicle for several hours. The distraught father, deeply affected by the loss, declined to be interviewed when approached by DailyMail.
This tragic event highlights a persistent nationwide issue. Data from the advocacy group No Heat Stroke indicates that on average, 37 children die each year under similar circumstances. Dr. David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Southern Florida, explains the psychological factors that can lead to such tragic oversights. “We have a powerful brain-autopilot memory system that gets us to do things automatically, and in that process, we lose awareness of other things in our mind, including that there’s a child in the car,” he stated.
The danger of leaving children in vehicles is exacerbated by their inability to efficiently regulate body temperature, which can cause their bodies to heat up three to five times faster than adults, as noted by Emily Thomas, Ph.D., from Consumer Reports. Even on mild days, the temperature inside a parked car can quickly escalate to dangerous levels.
After the infant was discovered, first responders rushed her to Sharp Grossmont Hospital, where she tragically passed away. The sheriff’s Child Abuse Unit is handling the ongoing investigation. As of now, no charges have been filed against the parents. This incident serves as a somber reminder of the dangers of leaving children unattended in vehicles, a mistake that can lead to irreversible consequences and communal mourning.
