Toddler found dead in parked car amid Florida heat
Police said the toddler was inadvertently left inside the hot vehicle for "an extended period of time."
Amber Rollins, director of Kids and Car Safety, speaks on the best ways to keep children safe from hot cars during the warmer months.
For the second time in two weeks, a child left in a parked car has died amid hot weather in Florida.
At around 2 p.m. local time on Tuesday, workers at the Big Bend Hospice facility in Tallahassee called 911 after the mother, an employee at the center, "inadvertently left her 11-month-old son" in her vehicle during her entire shift, according to Tallahassee Police.
Authorities said the mother discovered the child after leaving the facility at the end of her work day.
When responding to the call, Tallahassee Police discovered the toddler was dead, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Police were unable to definitively confirm if the death occurred due to heat, but high temperatures did reach 91 degrees Fahrenheit in Tallahassee on Tuesday. Just before 2 p.m, the temperature was slightly lower, at 87 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Tallahassee.
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"What we're looking at is a tragedy, plain and simple," Bill Wertman, the CEO of Big Bend Hospice, told the Tallahassee Democrat.
The newspaper said that police were conducting interviews and that no arrests had been made.
Santa Ana, California, police officer Irene Gomez looks into a minivan where a 5-month-old girl died after being left in a hot car for five hours on Sept. 9, 2004. (Photo/Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
This death comes just one week after a 3-year-old died when she was left in a hot car in Miami-Dade County. If Tuesday's death is confirmed to be heat related, it would be the second death involving a child left in a hot car in Florida this year and the 12th in the United States.
Temps have been in the 90s and high 80s during the month of July in the Tallahassee area, according to AccuWeather data.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2005 found that a car's interior can heat up by an average of 40 degrees within an hour.
"There are cases of children dying on days as cool as 70 degrees Fahrenheit," said Dr. Catherine McLaren, lead author of the research and clinical instructor in emergency medicine, said at the time.
“It is extremely important to have effective occupant detection technology as standard equipment in all vehicles as quickly as possible. Every day that we delay in advancing these cost-effective detection technologies means children are needlessly at risk of dying," said Janette Fennell, the founder and president of Kids and Car Safety.
The state of Florida ranks second in heat-related car deaths among children, with the first being Texas with 134 heat-related car deaths since 1998. Florida reported 107 since 1992, according to Kids and Car Safety.
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