Mom Leaves Baby In Boiling Hot Car While Playing Bingo, Finds Him Foaming At The Mouth

A mother in the Australian state of Victoria will face at least a year's worth of jail time after she left her infant inside a car on a scorching afternoon two years ago and played bingo for hours at a hotel, causing the infant to suffer severe injuries.

Kaija Millar, 34, received a prison sentence of up to three years in Victoria's County Court Thursday after she pleaded guilty to negligently causing serious injury to her son in 2020, News.com.au reported.

The mother had pulled into Brook Hotel at Point Cook just before 10 a.m. on an unspecified day in January of that year and left her then-5-month-old son Easton inside the baby seat of her car with the windows rolled up and the air-conditioning turned off, a report by ABC said.

She then proceeded to spend four hours and 51 minutes playing bingo and poker inside the hotel.

It was unclear how hot the inside of the car was during Millar's absence, but temperatures reportedly peaked at 37.5 degrees Celsius (99.5 degrees Fahrenheit) that afternoon.

Upon returning to her car, Millar found her son convulsing, foaming at the mouth and unresponsive.

She begged staff and witnesses for help but pleaded for them not to tell her husband about the incident.

Millar later lied to a responding doctor and two nurses and claimed the smoke haze in the area had made her son ill.

She also lied to paramedics who took Easton to the Royal Children's Hospital, telling them that the child had been in the car since 12:30 and that she had left the windows of her vehicle open.

Millar lied to police as well and told them she had parked her vehicle in the shade, turned on the air condition and checked on her son — claims that prosecutors said were "demonstrably wrong."

Security footage revealed Millar did not check on her son.

The incident resulted in Easton suffering from severe brain injury and cerebral palsy. Additionally, the child became permanently blind.

"Your son suffered these injuries because you left him unattended and uncared for in that hot, windows-closed locked car, in an open-air car park, on a scorching day whilst you were inside for five hours," Judge Felicity Hampel said.

"The injuries he suffered and will continue to suffer from for the rest of his diminished life are a direct consequence of that conduct," the magistrate added.

Millar, who the court heard had low intellectual functioning, will have to serve at least 12 months of her 3-year sentence before she can apply for parole.

Hampel said Millar's deficits and the insufficient support she received from her husband were mitigating factors in the first-time mother's case, 7News.com.au reported.

However, the judge noted that Millar has continued to maintain some of the lies she told on the day of the incident.