Babysitter charged: Baker County infant dies after being left in hot vehicle
The death of a Baker County baby in a sweltering car is reinforcing warnings for more steps to protect small children from being trapped in vehicles during life-threatening heat.
“It is beyond heartbreaking," Janette Fennell, founder and president of the nonprofit Kids and Car Safety, said about the death Wednesday of the 10-month-old girl whom police said had been entrusted to a babysitter.
The sitter, 46-year-old Rhonda C. Jewell, was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child, according to information posted Thursday on the Baker County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.
Jewell had picked up the baby from a home in north Macclenny about 8 a.m. and headed to another home where she was watching three other children, an arrest report said. When the baby’s mother arrived at 1 p.m., Jewell realized the infant was still in the vehicle and the baby was rushed to Fraser Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead.
The arrest report said Jewell told investigators she had forgotten the girl was still strapped into the vehicle, where the report said the temperature had risen to 133 degrees.
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Wednesday’s high temperature was 98 degrees in Jacksonville, the National Weather Service reported.
“As the sheriff of a small community, posting the details of this tragedy is very hard for me,” Sheriff Scotty Rhoden wrote in a message to the county with about 29,000 residents on Jacksonville’s western border.
“Each of us are given the gift of life every morning…,” Rhoden wrote. “In the blink of an eye, our world can be turned upside down. Please be mindful of this when trying to understand the tragedy that took place in our small town.”
Children are dying in hot cars
The child, whose name hasn’t been released, was at least the sixth this year to die in Florida from being trapped in a hot vehicle, according to a tally maintained by Kids and Car Safety. The group, which has pushed for national rules to equip cars with technology to help prevent hot-car deaths, logged 14 deaths nationally this year.
The most recent one in Florida before this was a 1-year-old girl left in a car overnight in Polk County on July 5, according to the state Department of Children and Families.
The parents also were charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said they accidentally left the toddler in her car seat while they removed their two other children and unloaded the vehicle after coming home from a Fourth of July celebration, according to The Associated Press.
The risk from hot cars could stay particularly high over the next several days, with forecasters projecting temperatures between 96 and 100 through Sunday, then dropping to the low 90s for a few days.
Northeast Florida has experienced hot-car deaths several times in recent years. Among those:
Last September, an 8-month-old girl was left in a car on Newberry Road, near Broward Road, while her father worked for about an hour at a house on a day when the temperature was around 88 degrees.
In 2019, 4-month-old Brooklyn Blount died after being left strapped into a car seat of a van carrying children to a Lenox Avenue daycare center. Co-owner Darryl Allyn Ewing, who was driving the van, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and was told to spend a weekend in jail each year for seven years.
In 2009, Shantel Wilcher transported up to eight children in her pickup truck for an unlicensed Jacksonville daycare, forgetting to remove 1-year-old Bernard J. Davis Jr., who died. She was sentenced to three years in prison.
Some reminders to look before you lock
Guardians are encouraged to place an item of the child’s in the front passenger seat as a visual cue that a child is with them. Another tip is to place an important item such a cellphone, purse or wallet, employee badge or laptop in the back seat so to force guardians to retrieve it and the child once they arrive at their destination. If more than one person is in charge of getting the children, clearly say and confirm who is getting each out of the vehicle.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Babysitter arrested in Baker County child's hot-car death
