3 more children die after found in hot vehicles
Police said a mother was charged in the deaths of her two daughters who were reportedly found in a car amid sweltering heat in North Carolina, while in New Jersey Tuesday, a 2-year-old was found unresponsive in a parked vehicle.
Three more children were reported dead from Aug. 27-30, raising the tragic total of hot car deaths.
Three more children, including two siblings in North Carolina, have died after they were reportedly left in hot vehicles in recent days, according to authorities.
In the first incident, 3-year-old Amora Lou Milbourne and her 2-year-old sister, Trinity Michelle Milbourne, were pronounced dead at Duke Raleigh Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, Saturday night, according to police.
The girls’ mother, Launice S. Battle, of Cary, North Carolina, was charged with murder in connection with their deaths, police said.
Neither the Raleigh police or the Wake County District Attorney’s Office released details in the case, including how the girls died or where they were found. However, Battle's father told WRAL-TV that it was his understanding the children were left in a hot car. Temperatures in Raleigh reached a high of 96 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday, according to AccuWeather data.
Battle’s cousin, Lisacious Williams, said the family was still in shock.
"We love Launice no matter what, and we will support her no matter what. This was a careless mistake," said Battle’s cousin Lisacious Williams told WRAL.
Launice Shanique Battle was charged in the deaths of her two young daughters in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022. (Photo/Raleigh Police Department)
Three days later, in a separate incident that occurred in Franklin Township, New Jersey, about a half-hour northeast of Princeton, a 2-year-old girl was found unresponsive in a vehicle parked in the driveway outside a residence around 2:15 p.m., according to Somerset County authorities. It was unclear how long the child had been left in the car Tuesday afternoon, although law enforcement sources told WNBC New York that the child may have been left for up to seven hours before being found.
The high temperature on Tuesday for Franklin was 93 F, according to AccuWeather.
A neighbor who works with the local fire department was administering CPR on the child when police and medical units arrived and also tried life-saving measures. However, minutes later the child was pronounced dead at the scene, the county prosecutor's office said.
One neighbor told WNBC that a woman, who appeared to be the mother, collapsed on the front lawn after investigators spoke with her, and was taken away in an ambulance.
Detectives from the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office are investigating.
These recent fatalities bring the total number of hot car deaths involving children to 22, according to the nationwide organization Kids and Car Safety, which tracks such data.
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. Law enforcement officials and other experts warn that 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 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.
Earlier this month, a 5-year-old boy died after he was found unresponsive in a hot car parked outside of an elementary school in Mission, Texas, where one of the child's parents works, school officials said.
And in Louisiana, a 6-month-old infant was found in a hot SUV on Aug. 14. The infant was in the vehicle for five hours amid temperatures in the upper 80s. The mother has been charged with second-degree murder in the death.
Around the same time, a separate incident occurred in Fort Smith, Arkansas, when a young child was found unresponsive in a closed car. It was unclear how long the child had been in the car but he died hours later at the hospital.
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