A two-year-old baby turned Tuesday in New Jersey into the 22 child deaths this year in a car under the heat in the US
The fatal count is kept by the organization KidsAndCars.org. More than 940 children died in hot cars across the country of 1990 to 2020, depending on that organization which works to raise public awareness and press for the enactment of laws that prevent these tragedies.
“This is the kind of tragedy that does not discriminate. It has to do with a failure in the brain’s memory, in many cases,” Sue Auriemma, an expert from that organization, told NBC News “Unfortunately, the worst mistake you can make a father is to think that this cannot happen to them”.
NJ mom collapses to ground ‘screaming in anguish after toddler died in hot car https://t.co/FCbcZokzNk pic.twitter.com/t2z6uK21cc
— New York Post (@nypost) September 1, 2022
“This is the kind of tragedy that does not discriminate. It has to do with a failure in the brain’s memory, in many cases”
Sue Auriemma, expert from “Kids and Car Safety ”
In the latest tragedy of this kind, a A two-year-old girl was found dead inside a car in the driveway of a home on Tuesday in Franklin Township, New Jersey.
The child may have been there for more than seven hours in a particularly hot summer day, according to sources and neighbors. The temperature at nearby Somerset Airport on Tuesday at 2 pm, just before the dead girl was found, was 90 degrees F (39C) , according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
The little girl was found in a baby seat in the back of a gray Honda Civic shortly after 2: 20 Tuesday pm, authorities said. A spokesperson for the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office said detectives were still trying to establish a timeline for how long the baby remained in the vehicle.
It is unclear how or why the baby was left in the car seat at some point Tuesday morning. It was not until the afternoon that someone noticed and called 911.
A ABC News helicopter recorded the unidentified mother on the ground being comforted by police outside her home in Franklin Township, after a neighbor heard her “scream in pain and anguish” when discovering what had happened.
The mother was so upset that they finally took her away in an ambulance. The parents didn’t know they had left their young daughter in the hot car until police knocked on their door, neighbors told NBC News.
The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the internal temperature of a car, regardless of whether the windows are closed or open, can rise as high as 39 degrees F (4.5C) in an hour, even if the thermometer outside reads a few 40F (21C). Most of the temperature increase occurs within the first 15-30 minutes, and no amount of shadow is enough to protect children from these dangers, the FDNY stressed.
In July 2019 One-year-old Hispanic twins died in the Bronx (NYC) after their father left them in the car on his way to work. The man, Juan Rodríguez, pleaded guilty but was released on parole as he was deemed to be a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder as a veteran of the Iraq War.
Dr. Erick Eiting, of Mt Sinai Beth Israel, recalled that it doesn’t take long for extreme heat to create life-threatening conditions for anyone left inside a vehicle.
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“I think what often surprises us is how little time people spend in suffering the damage and consequences of heat stroke… Although it may seem like a short period of time, just a few minutes can be deadly,” Eiting said.
“She collapsed to the ground. They took her in the ambulance. Then more police came, and they put yellow tape around the car.”
Police launched an investigation into the death of a young child found inside a car in the driveway of a Franklin Township home. pic.twitter.com/EBkBYwZuz3— PIX11 News (@PIX11News) August 31, 2022
