5-year-old dies after found in hot car in Texas
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Police are investigating the death of a 5-year-old boy who was found unresponsive in a hot car parked outside of an elementary school Thursday in Mission, Texas, where one of the child's parents works, school officials said.
Police said the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call around 4 p.m. about an unconscious "child in a car." The boy was rushed inside Dr. Americo Paredes Elementary School where the nurse's staff and other medical personnel arriving on the scene tried to resuscitate the boy, but they could not revive him, said Raul Gonzalez, chief of police for the La Joya Independent School District, during a Friday press conference.
Gonzalez said his office, the county Sheriff's Office and the county Children Protective & Regulatory Services are conducting an investigation into the child's death. He added that no further information would be released about the incident or the child and parent's identities while the investigation was underway.
It was unclear how long the boy was inside the vehicle. According to AccuWeather data, temperatures in Mission, Texas, on Thursday surpassed the century mark, reaching 101 degrees Fahrenheit.
The new school year in the city of Mission, on the Texas-Mexico border, started Aug. 15 and Thursday would have been a normal day of classes at Paredes Elementary, according to the district's website.
The boy's death marks the 19th hot car death in the U.S. this year, and the fourth in Texas, according to the nationwide organization Kids and Car Safety, which tracks such data.
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With a total of 146 hot car deaths from 1990 to 2021, the group said that Texas had the most hot car fatalities of any state. Before Thursday's fatality, the last reported hot car death in the state took place June 20 in the Houston area when a mother rushing home to prepare for a birthday party left her 5-year-old son in a vehicle for two to three hours before realizing he was in there, authorities said.
According to an analysis from Kids and Car Safety, 56% of all child hot car deaths from 1990 to 2021 happened when the child was left in the vehicle unknowingly.
The inside of a vehicle can heat up very quickly, and children can die from heatstroke in a car when the outside temperatures are as low as 60 degrees F, researchers have noted.
"It's important for families to understand that it doesn't have to be 90 degrees outside for a child to suffer from heatstroke inside a vehicle," Amber Rollins, the director of the national non-profit organization KidsandCar.org previously told AccuWeather.
Also, the group's page noted that cracking the windows does not help slow the heating process inside a vehicle. In fact, the temperature inside a car can reach 125 degrees even with the windows opened slightly.
Earlier this month, in Louisiana, a 6-month-old infant was found in a hot SUV. The infant was in the vehicle for five hours amid temperatures in the upper 80s. The Louisiana mother has been charged with second-degree murder in the death.
Around the same time, a separate incident occurred in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Police officers were investigating the death of a young child who was found unresponsive in a closed car. Officers were unaware of how long the child had been in the car.
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