A 1-Year-Old Died After Being Left In A Hot Car While His Father Worked A Restaurant
A 1-year-old boy died on Saturday, June 22 after being left in the car for five hours, The Houston Chronicle reports. The boy was left unattended in an SUV outside of a restaurant in Texas where his father was working at the time.
Reportedly, the boy’s father began his shift around 11 a.m. at a restaurant called Los Lazos. Around 4 p.m., he returned to his Chevrolet Tahoe to find his son, who was not in a car seat, unresponsive, according to the Galveston Police Department. Police also identified the father as Abner Peña, but announced Sunday that no charges had been filed in the death.
However, police spokesman Sgt. Xavier Hancock said in a statement that the investigation “is still fluid and other persons need to be located and interviewed.”
The 1-year-old was pronounced dead at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston after emergency first responders were called to the scene. On the day of the child’s death, the temperature reached a high of 92 degrees, per Houston Chronicle. Experts say that the car’s air temperature would have been greater than 135 degrees.
According to noheatstroke.org, this death is the second of its type in the state in this month, and the 13th case in the country during 2019. The site also reports that since 1998, 54% of pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths occur when the child is forgotten by a caregiver.
Noheatstroke.org’s safety recommendations include never leaving a child unattended for even a minute in a vehicle and to call 9-1-1 if you do see a child unattended in a car.
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