1-Year-Old Girl Left In Hot Car Dies — 50th Death Of 2019

A recent hot-car death marked the 50th such incident in the recent spate of the mayhem. A 1-year-old girl has died after being left alone for hours in a hot car outside her family’s home, police said.

On Oct. 14, Monday evening, police reached a Tampa home following a 911 call from the girl’s parents at around 6:30 p.m. They found the child lying unconscious inside the car and took her to the nearby hospital without further delay. She was pronounced dead by the doctors, according to the Tampa Police Department.

The ongoing investigations hinted that the girl had been left inside the car since Monday morning whilst the temperatures of Tampa soared above 90 degrees Fahrenheit that day.

Police spokesman Steve Hegarty told Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS that it may have been a busy morning for the family. He also added that the family had several other children and in the chaos of getting everyone in their right place, the girl was left behind in the back seat mistakenly.

The police are still investigating into the child’s death. They believe that it was an accidental death and no signs of foul play have been traced.

Hegarty said that the dad drove the car to transport people to school and work, where he forgot the 1-year-old. He then switched to another vehicle and drove to work while the toddler struggled for her life in the other car.

According to data collected by KidsAndCars.org, a national nonprofit child safety organization, 54 of such fatalities had happened in the United States last year.

Janette Fennell, president of KidsAndCars.org told ABC news, "As a county we need to understand that you can't educate a brain not to forget. No. 1 indicator [of a hot-car incident] is a change in routine."

KidsAndCars.org is calling for Congress to pass the Hot Cars Act of 2019 which would mandate the car owners to install rear occupant alarm technology to detect a child’s presence there.