A woman in North Carolina is facing involuntary manslaughter charges after her child died after being left in a hot car, police said.
The 8-year-old girl was found in critical condition in a car in Charlotte on Wednesday evening and taken to a local hospital, but later died of a heat-related medical emergency, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. The child’s mother was charged with involuntary manslaughter and child abuse by intentional act resulting in serious injury.
The 36-year-old woman is being held in the Mecklenburg County Jail on a $250,000 bond, jail records show.
The woman told police she left her daughter in the car while she went to work, according to an arrest affidavit. Before she left, she said she had left the air on in the car, but the child may have turned it off because she was cold.
The last time the woman heard from her daughter was about an hour and a half before she returned to the car, authorities said, where she found the child lying unresponsive on the floor of the backseat.
According to police, the woman smashed the back window with a hammer to get to her daughter. She then drove to the hospital but stopped at a nearby business to get help, authorities said. Someone called 911 to report the emergency, police said.
After emergency workers took the child to Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center, the girl was pronounced dead early Thursday morning.
The woman told police she shouldn’t have left her child in the car and that she knew it was 93 degrees Fahrenheit outside, the affidavit said. She was appointed a public defender to represent her, according to court records. Her next scheduled hearing is July 17.
Every ten days, a child dies from heatstroke after being left in a car, and according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the majority of these deaths occur because someone leaves a child in their car. More than 1,000 children have died in the past thirty years.
a CBS News data analysis shows that 83% of all deaths from hot cars of the past six years took place between May and September.
